The Princess and the Pea

NCE 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.


There, that is a true story.