THE PRINCESS ON THE PEA
There was once a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she was to
be a _real_ princess. So he travelled about, all through the world, to
find a real one, but everywhere there was something in the way. There
were princesses enough, but whether they were _real_ princesses he could
not quite make out: there was always something that did not seem quite
right. So he came home again, and was quite sad: for he wished so much
to have a real princess. One evening a terrible storm came on. It
lightened and thundered, the rain streamed down; it was quite fearful!
Then there was a knocking at the town gate, and the old king went out to
open it.
It was a princess who stood outside the gate. But, mercy! how she
looked, from the rain and the rough weather! The water ran down from her
hair and her clothes; it ran in at the points of her shoes, and out at
the heels; and yet she declared that she was a real princess.
"Yes, we will soon find that out," thought the old queen. But she said
nothing, only went into the bedchamber, took all the bedding off, and
put a pea on the flooring of the bedstead; then she took twenty
mattresses and laid them upon the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds
upon the mattresses. On this the princess had to lie all night. In the
morning she was asked how she had slept.
"Oh, miserably!" said the princess. "I scarcely closed my eyes all night
long. Goodness knows what was in my bed. I lay upon something hard, so
that I am black and blue all over. It is quite dreadful!"
Now they saw that she was a real princess, for through the twenty
mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds she had felt the pea. No one
but a real princess could be so delicate.
So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a true
princess; and the pea was put in the museum, and it is there now, unless
somebody has carried it off.
Look you, this is a true story.