I used to hate this story as we were made to memorise it at school, in our French lessons. 'Le Petit Prince' was Antoine de Saint-Exupery's most successful piece of writing. I guess it is up there with Beatrix Potter's 'Peter Rabbit' and A.A.Milne's 'Winnie the Pooh'. It certainly made his fortune and made his name known to children all over the world.
He was always a bit of a troubled soul, as was Consuelo, his wife and their marriage seemed doomed to be a disaster even before his tragic ending when the plane he was flying disappeared over the Mediterranean in 1944.
Antoine or Tonio as his wife affectionately called him, spent his childhood at the Chateau de Saint-Maurice de Remens, near Lyons, which, happily, is still standing. He grew up there with his four siblings and had a wonderful time. After his marriage to Consuelo they never seemed to be able to create a home together. They lived first at the Villa Mirador, outside Nice. After that they lived in Paris, Casablanca and New York but he never seemed able to settle anywhere. Consuelo would come home to find that he had emptied the house and they would move on to somewhere else. Even his old home, the Chateau at Saint-Maurice de Remens was sold and the entire contents disposed of.
Saint-Ex had three loves - his flying, his writing and his wife but he was never attached to any of his houses.
His marriage with Consuelo was tumultuous but lasted for thirteen years before his untimely death. He had several dices with death before the final fatal one but Consuelo, the Spanish lady with the flaming red hair, at the Couscous party that Nancie attended in 1934, lived on until 1979.
There is an extraordinary film on youtube of an interview that Consuelo de Saint-Exupery gave in the 1970s. She is speaking French with an Ecuadorian accent and I found it easier to read the Spanish subtitles on the screen than to follow her French! The red hair has faded but even in her old age she is a very handsome woman.
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