CHAPTER 12 – MOUSE

It was very interesting for the little prince. With such power, he could watch the sunset, not forty-four times, but seventy-two, or even a hundred, or even two hundred times on the same day. And he could still sit in one place.

At that moment he remembered his little planet which he left, and he felt a little sad. That’s why he asked the king for something, “I would like to see a sunset. Please, can you order the sun to go down?”

“If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to write a book, or to change into a sea bird, and if the general didn’t do it, whose mistake was it?” asked the king, “the general’s or my mistake?”

“Your mistake,” said the little prince.

“Exactly. We must ask from others what others can do,” the king continued. “The control has to be reasonable. If you order your people to jump into the sea, they will start a revolution. I have the right to control because my orders are reasonable.”

“And my sunset?” said the little prince, who never forgot a question when he asked it.

“You will have your sunset. I will order it. But I have my rules. I will wait until the conditions are right.”

“When will it be?” asked the little prince.

“Well!” said the king, then he took a large calendar. “It will be this evening at about twenty minutes to eight. And you will see that everything happens as I order.

The little prince yawned. He was sad that the conditions weren’t right for his sunset. Then he started to be a little bored.

“I have nothing to do here,” he said to the king. “I will continue on my journey.”

“Don’t go,” said the king because he was happy that he was a king for somebody now. “Don’t leave, I will make you my minister!”

“Minister of what?”

“Minister of justice.”

“But there is nobody here who I can judge.”

“You never know,” said the king. “Maybe there is somebody in my kingdom who we didn’t see.”

“Oh, but I saw your kingdom,” said the little prince. He looked once more around the whole planet. “There is nobody else on the planet.”