She had soon begun tormenting him with her rather touchy vanity. One day, for instance, alluding to her four thorns, she remarked to the little prince,
"I'm ready for tigers, with all their claws!"
"There are no tigers on my planet," the little prince had objected, "and besides, tigers don't eat weeds."
"I am not a weed," the flower sweetly replied.
"Forgive me..."
"I am not at all afraid of tigers, but I have a horror of drafts. You wouldn't happen to have a screen?"
"A horror of drafts... that's not a good sign, for a plant," the little prince had observed. "How complicated this flower is..."
"After dark you will put my under glass. How cold it is where you live - quite uncomfortable. Where I come from --"
But she suddenly broke off. She had come here as a seed. She couldn't have known anything of other worlds.Humiliated at having let herself be caught on the verge of so naive a lie, she coughed two or three times in order to put the little prince in the wrong.
"That screen?"
"I was going to look for one, but you were speaking to me!"
Then she made herself cough again, in order to inflict a twinge of remorse on him all the same.
