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. The old king said to the old
queen, “Go into the bedroom, take all the bedding off the bedstead, and lay 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 to the princess, "How did you
sleep last night?"
"Oh, very badly! 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. The prince and the princess got
married, and the pea was put in the museum, where it may still be seen, if no
one has stolen it. And finally, they live happily ever after.
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