The princess and the pea ☀

Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess. He travelled all over the world to find one, but he couldn’t getany. There were many princesses, 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.

                One evening a terrible storm occurred, there was thunder and lightning, and the heavy rain poured down. Suddenly there was knocking at the city gate, and the old king went to open it. It was a princess standing out there in front of the gate. The rain and the wind had made her look terrible. And yet she said that she was a real princess.

                The old queen said nothing, went into the bed-room, took all the bed covers off the bed, and laid a pea on the undernearth; then she look twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty quilts on top of the mattresses. The princess had to lie on this all night.

                In the morning she was asked how she had slept. “ Oh, very badly!” said she. “ I have hardly closed my eyes all night. Only God knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am bruised 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 quilts. 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.