The Princess and the Pea

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, there lived a prince. He wanted to get married, but not to just anyone, only to a real princess.

"Where can I find her?" he sighed.

So the prince saddled his horse and set off into the world. Clip-clop, over the mountains. Clip-clop, through the forests. Clip-clop, across the wide fields.

He met plenty of princesses. One laughed so loudly that the windowpanes rattled. Another spent the whole day counting her dresses and could never finish. The third seemed nice enough, but something about her was not quite right, and the prince could not say what.

And every time he thought:

"A princess? It seems so. But a real one? Who knows..."

The prince came home very, very sad.

"There is no real princess in the whole world," he said.

His mother, the old queen, only smiled a sly little smile.

One evening a terrible storm blew up. Whoo-oo-oo! howled the wind. Boom-bang! rumbled the thunder. The rain poured down as if from a bucket.

Then, knock-knock-knock! Someone was knocking at the city gate.

The old king went to open it himself. He looked, and there at the gate stood a girl. Soaking wet! Water ran down her braids and her cloak and squelched in her little shoes.

"Good evening," she said, shivering. "I am a princess. A real one."

"Well, we shall see about that," thought the queen. But she said nothing out loud.

The queen went to the guest bedroom. She took everything off the bed, and on the bare boards she laid one small green pea. On top of the pea she put a mattress. On that mattress, another mattress. And another, and another... Twenty mattresses! And on top of them twenty eiderdown quilts, soft as little clouds.

The bed came out so high that the guest had to climb up it by a ladder.

"Good night," said the queen, and she gently closed the door.

In the morning everyone gathered for breakfast.

"How did you sleep?" asked the queen.

"Oh, badly!" sighed the princess. "I hardly closed my eyes. There was something hard, so very hard, in the bed. I tossed and turned this way and that, and now I am sore all over!"

The king clapped his hands, and the queen laughed:

"She felt a pea through twenty mattresses and twenty quilts! Only a real princess can be so delicate!"

The prince positively glowed. Now he knew for certain: here she was, the real one.

Soon the wedding was held, and the prince never had to ride around the world again.

As for the pea, it was put in the royal treasury, under glass, right beside the golden crowns. They say it is still lying there, unless, of course, somebody has taken it.

And that is the whole true story.