The 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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