Princess and the Pea
Once upon a time there was a prince
who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have to be a real princess. He
travelled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he
wanted. There were princesses enough, but it was difficult to find out whether
they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not as it
should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he would have liked very much
to have a real princess.
One evening a terrible storm came
on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents.
Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open
it.
It was a princess standing out there
in front of the gate. But, good gracious! what a sight the rain and the wind
had made her look. The water ran down from her hair and clothes; it ran down
into the toes of her shoes and out again at the heels. And yet she said that
she was a real princess.
"Well, we'll soon find that
out," thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went into the bed-room,
took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom; then she
took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eider-down
beds on top of the mattresses.
On this the princess had to lie all
night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept.
"Oh, very badly!" said
she. "I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was
in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all
over my body. It's horrible!"
Now they knew that she was a real
princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and
the twenty eider-down beds.
Nobody but a real princess could be as
sensitive as that.
So the prince took her for his wife,
for now he knew that he had a real princess; and the pea was put in the museum,
where it may still be seen, if no one has stolen it.
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