Hans Christian Andersen
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.
There, that is a true story.
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