| 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.
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