"At night, you'll look up at the stars. It's too small, where I live, for me to show you where my star is. It's better that way. My star will be ... one of the stars, for you. So you'll like looking at all of them. They'll all be your friends. And besides, I have a present for you." He laughed again.
"Ah, little fellow, little fellow, I love hearing that laugh!"
"That'll be my present. Just that ... It'll be the same as for the water."
"What do you mean?"
"People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers stars are guides. For other people, they're nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they're problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you'll have stars like nobody else."
"What do you mean?"
"When you look up at the sky at night, since I'll be living on one of them, since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it'll be as if all the stars laughing. You'll have stars that can laugh!"
And he laughed again.
"And when you're consoled (everyone eventually is consoled), you'll be glad you've known me. You'll always be my friend. You'll feel like laughing with me. And you'll open your window sometimes just for the fun of it ... And your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you're looking up at the sky. Then you'll tell them, 'Yes, it's the stars; they always make me laugh!' And they'll think you're crazy. It'll be a nasty trick I played on you ..."
And he laughed again.
"And it'll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of tiny bells that know how to laugh ... "
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, born on this day in 1900, from The Little Prince
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