A sentence from Le Petit Prince

Here are three consecutive sentences from Chapter 4 of Le Petit Prince. I cannot figure out the meaning of the second sentence.

Elles (les grandes personnes) sont comme ça.
Il ne faut pas leur en vouloir.
Les enfants doivent être très indulgents envers les grandes personnes.

They are like that.
Il ne faut ...
Children have to be very tolerant towards grown-ups.

My level of French is somewhere between beginner and advanced beginner, but not yet intermediate. I have a mental block about that second sentence. I would much appreciate some help.

Merci beaucoup,
Paul B.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on July 22, 2009 at 6:25am

Paul: the expression en vouloir à qn is an idiom meaning something like "to be hard/harsh on sb", "hold it against sb". It's quite common in the negative as you see here, and for example you might say:

ne m'en veux pas si je ne viens pas
"don't hold it against me if I don't come", "don't take it the wrong way if I don't come"

So here, possible translations (depending on the rest of the context) might be: "You shouldn't hold it against them", "You shouldn't go too heavily on them" etc.

The vous equivalent is ne m'en voulez pas si...-- i.e. the expression is a bit unusual in that the normal imperative of vouloir is veuillez (veuillez indiquer si... = please indicate if...).

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Permalink Reply by Paul E. Baronowsky on July 22, 2009 at 5:17pm

Merci beaucoup, Neil. Je le comprends.

I had thought that it might be an idiom, but I would never have thought of that meaning..
"You shouldn't hold it against them" fits the context perfectly.

Thanks again,
Paul B.