The Princess and the Pea

Once upon a time there lived a prince who wanted to marry a princess, but she needed to be a real princess. He traveled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he find 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 felt very sad, for he would have liked very much to have found a real princess.

One evening a terrible storm came. 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.

There was a princess standing out 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 she was a real princess.

“Well, we’ll soon find that out,” thought the queen. But she said nothing, went into the bedroom, took all of the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a single pea on the bottom. Then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then put 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 that 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.

And that is a true story.