于是花儿放开嗓门咳嗽了几声，就是要使小王子后悔自己的过失。
所以，小王子本来诚心诚意地喜欢这朵花，可是，这一来，却使他马上对她产生了怀疑。小王子对一些无关紧要的话看得太认真，这让他很苦恼。
有一天他告诉我说：“我不该把她的话当真，不应听信那些花儿的话。我们只要欣赏花的样子，看看花，闻闻它就得了。我的花让我的星球布满芬芳，可我却不为此高兴，不会享受它。花说的关于老虎爪子的事让我很生气，其实她只是在撒娇，却反而使我恼火……”
他还告诉我说：
“我那时什么也不懂！我应该根据她的行为，而不是听她的话来判断她。她芳香四溢，让我的生活芬芳多彩，我真不该离开她跑出来。我早该猜到，在她那令人爱怜的小把戏后面隐藏着多少柔情啊。花的心事多么自相矛盾！我当时太年轻，还不懂得爱她。”
Chapter 8
I soon learned to know this flower better. On the little prince’s planet the flowers had always been very simple. They had only one ring of petals; they took up no room at all; they were a trouble to nobody. One morning they would appear in the grass, and by night they would have faded peacefully away. But one day, from a seed blown from no one knew where, a new flower had come up; and the little prince had watched very closely over this small sprout which was not like any other small sprouts on his planet. It might, you see, have been a new kind of baobab.
The shrub soon stopped growing, and began to get ready to produce a flower. The little prince, who was present at the first appearance of a huge bud, felt at once that some sort of miraculous apparition must emerge from it. But the flower was not satisfied to complete the preparations for her beauty in the shelter of her green chamber. She chose her colours with the greatest care. She adjusted her petals one by one. She did not wish to go out into the world all rumpled, like the field poppies. It was only in the full radiance of her beauty that she wished to appear. Oh, yes! She was a coquettish creature! And her mysterious adornment lasted for days and days.
Then one morning, exactly at sunrise, she suddenly showed herself.
And, after working with all this painstaking precision, she yawned and said:"Ah! I am scarcely awake. I beg that you will excuse me. My petals are still all disarranged..."But the little prince could not restrain his admiration:"Oh! How beautiful you are!"
"Am I not" the flower responded, sweetly. "And I was born at the same moment as the sun..."The little prince could guess easily enough that she was not any too modest— but how moving— and exciting— she was!
"I think it is time for breakfast," she added an instant later. "If you would have the kindness to think of my needs—"And the little prince, completely abashed, went to look for a sprinkling-can of fresh water. So, he tended the flower.
So, too, she began very quickly to torment him with her vanity— which was, if the truth be known, a little difficult to deal with. One day, for instance, when she was speaking of her four thorns, she said to the little prince:"Let the tigers come with their claws!""There are no tigers on my planet," the little prince objected. "And, anyway, tigers do not eat weeds.""I am not a weed," the flower replied, sweetly.
"Please excuse me..."
"I am not at all afraid of tigers," she went on, "but I have a horror of drafts. I suppose you wouldn’t have a screen for me""A horror of drafts— that is bad luck, for a plant," remarked the little prince, and added to himself, "This flower is a very complex creature...""At night I want you to put me under a glass globe. It is very cold where you live. In the place I came from—"But she interrupted herself at that point. She had come in the form of a seed. She could not have known anything of any other worlds. Embarassed over having let herself be caught on the verge of such a naive untruth, she coughed two or three times, in order to put the little prince in the wrong.
"The screen"
"I was just going to look for it when you spoke to me..."Then she forced her cough a little more so that he should suffer from remorse just the same.
So the little prince, in spite of all the good will that was inseparable from his love, had soon come to doubt her. He had taken seriously words which were without importance, and it made him very unhappy.
"I ought not to have listened to her," he confided to me one day. "One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace. This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much, should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity."And he continued his confidences:"The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little strategems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her..."
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