A Splendid Gift Read Online Free PDF Page A

and ceilings with crown moldings. He could see her setting the large oak wood dining room table with china and sterling, just as his mother had done during his childhood in Saint-Maurice. It gave him pleasure to imagine her bringing her innate sense of beauty to the domestic rituals that Consuelo never had any interest in. And yet it was part of his moral code that he must not invite Silvia into the home he shared with his wife.
    ***
    Consuelo always had too many angry words for him. Even when she wasn’t at home, he could still hear her voice like a scythe slicing through the air.
    And when she was feeling particularly vitriolic, she would throw plates or anything else she could find into the air.
    But even though Silvia hardly spoke more than a few words of French, she could still read his emotions more clearly than anyone else. Without the benefit of words, she looked for other ways of interpreting his thoughts. She would read the expressions in his eyes or sense the pressure of his touch. Even his appetite for her food conveyed to her what he was feeling. And she understood best how to respond to his moods. When his eyes were wet with melancholy, she knew she had to be almost maternal with him and restore him by putting extra butter on his English muffins and more milk in his scrambled eggs. And when his eyes were alive with creative energy, she searched her apartment for things to stoke his imagination. When his body was ailing, she tried to restore his aching muscles with a massage.
    She also understood how much she could soothe him simply by taking his hand in hers. Perhaps it was their language of touch that he loved the most. Her tight grip that begged him to stay a few minutes longer. Or the light caresses of her fingertips that felt as thrilling as the summer rain. He closed his eyes, and could convince himself that this was the way the heart truly communicated. As much as he sought to reveal the truth through his writing, he knew that words alone could fall short.
    He wanted to somehow immortalize her special gift. To honor her, Saint-Exupéry decided that in his story, he would freely cast the fox, the animal who was the little prince’s best and wisest friend, in her image. He knew this fox not only had to have Silvia’s auburn hair and her bright eyes, but that it also had to be wiser and more compassionate than all the rest. So he struggled to find the perfect words for this character to express.
    That evening he returned to his draft of
The Little Prince
, and reworked it for hours. He grappled to find the exact lines that could capture Silvia.
    After the paper had been made nearly illegible by his constant revisions, he finally found the phrase he sought: “
On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur
.
L’essential est invisible pour les yeux.
” “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
    ***
    By early August,
The Little Prince
was taking shape. Removed from the frenetic pace of New York City, Saint-Exupéry had been more productive than ever while at the Bevin House.
    Eager to share his latest revisions with Silvia, he raced into Manhattan with his most-recent draft tucked into his satchel. Although they had seen each other less often since he had moved full-time to Eaton’s Neck, he still called her several times a week. Never at a civilized hour, but almost always in the middle of the night, when his bouts of creative energy took him over.
    For days now, he had been imagining her dark eyes and lithe body beside him. But when he knocked at her door, in her arms was a small black dog. It was a boxer with a wet nose, a wrinkled brow, and a face somewhere between Winston Churchill’s and a smashed fruit.
    With her cheek against the puppy’s tiny velvet ears, she looked up at him. “I’ve bought you a small present.” She placed the little dog beside his feet.
    Clasped in her hand, she held a scrap of paper. Her tutor had translated exactly what Silvia wanted to