He imagined his father wandering around those walls, stopping to look after his colorful birds or to observe the night skies with the young prince or to read stories for the delight of his favorite son.
“Father, why did you not leave the throne to him?” he moaned. “I would have been satisfied to know that you had loved me and in spite of everything you had not denied me your name. That way I wouldn't be at this dead end.”
But his father could not hear him, as he continued to smile at him from the top of his statuesque pose in a huge picture next to the bed.
On the night table was a much used book: the stories of the fabulous town of Cathay, that had been the subject of the little prince’s dreams. A bundle of letters (the messages, he discovered with a brief jolt, that he had sent to his
