Princess
And The Pea
Once upon a
time there lived a prince who wished more
than anything to find a princess to
marry. He traveled far and wide,
and although he met many princesses, none
of them was quite what he wanted.
Some were too stout, some were too tall,
some were too serious, some were too
thin, and some were too silly. Not
one of them was everything a real
princess should be. And so the sad
prince returned home.
Soon after
his return there was a terrible
storm. All around the palace, the
lightning flashed, the thunder roared,
and the rain poured down fiercely.
That night there came a knocking at the
palace gate, and the old king went to
answer it.
A princess
stood there, but what a sight she
was! Rain streamed from her long
hair, and her clothes were muddy and
torn. Her shoes were so full of
water that it poured out from her toes
and heels. Yet she insisted that
she was a real princess.
"We'll
soon find out if that's true!"
thought the old queen, but she said
nothing. Instead, she went to a
bedchamber and laid a single pea beneath
the mattress. She ordered her servants to
pile nineteen more mattresses on top of
the pea and twenty eiderdown quilts on
top of the mattresses. The queen
then led the princess to the bed and bid
her good night.
The next
morning, the princess was asked how she
had slept.
"Oh,"
she replied, "very badly
indeed! I don't know what could
have been in that bed, but it was very
hard and uncomfortable! I'm black
and blue all over! It's
terrible!"
And then
everyone in the palace knew that she must
be a real princess, for she had felt the
pea right through twenty mattresses and
twenty eiderdown quilts. Surely,
only a real princess could do that!
So the
prince took her for his wife because he
know that she was a real princess, and
the lived very happily together. As
for the pea, it was put in the museum,
where it can still be seen.
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