The Real Princess

Once there was a prince, and he wanted to marry a princess – but she had to be a real princess. He traveled all over the world to find one, but there was always something wrong. Not one of the many royal maidens he met was as dainty or as sensitive as he desired them to be. And so he returned sadly to his palace.

One night there was a terrible storm. The lightning flashed, the thunder rolled, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly there was a knock at the palace gate. The old king himself went down to see who was there.

It was a princess who stood outside. At least, she said she was a princess, though she did not look like one just then. Her hair and clothes were soaking wet from the rain. Water streamed out of her shoes. “Can I find shelter here for the night?” she asked.

The king gladly invited her in, and then he went to tell the queen.

“Well, we shall soon see if it is true that she is a princess,” said the queen to herself. She went into a room to prepare a bed for the princess. Taking all the bedclothes off the bed, she laid a dried pea on the bedstead. Then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on top of the pea. On top of the mattresses she put twenty feather beds. This is where the princess was to sleep.

In the morning the queen asked the girl how she had slept.

“Oh, terribly!” complained the princess. “I hardly closed my eyes the whole night. Heaven knows what was in the bed. I was lying on something so hard that I am black and blue all over.”

The queen saw at once that she must be a real princess, having been so delicate as to feel the pea through twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. She hurried to the prince to tell him the joyful news.

The prince took the real princess for his wife the very next day, and the pea was put into a museum for everyone to see.