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The Princess and the Pea
H.C. Andersen

Once upon a time, there was a Prince who wanted to marry a Princess. But only a real one would do. So he traveled the world to find her, but everywhere, something was wrong. 

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There were plenty of Princesses, but how was he to know whether they were real Princesses? There was something not quite right about them all. So he came home again and was very unhappy, because he wanted so badly, a real Princess.

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One evening, there was a terrible storm. There was lighting, thunder and rain. It was really frightful! In the midst of it all, came a knocking at the town gate and the old King went to open it.

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Outside was a Princess, and what a sight she was in all that rain and wind.

Water streamed from her hair, down her clothes, into her shoes, and ran out at the heels. Yet she claimed, to be a real Princess.

We'll soon find that out, the old Queen thought to herself.

Without saying a word about it, she went to the bedchamber, stripped back the bedclothes, and put just one pea in the bottom of the bed.

 

Then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on the pea. Then she took twenty eiderdown feather beds and piled them on the mattresses. Up on top of all these the Princess was to spend the night.

 

In the morning they asked her:

- Did you sleep well?

- Oh! said the Princess. No, I scarcely slept at all. Heaven knows what's in that bed. I lay on something so hard that I'm black and blue all over. It was simply terrible.

 

Now, they could see for sure that she was a real Princess. There was no question about it, since that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. 

Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate. So the Prince made haste to marry her, because he knew he had found a real Princess.

As for the pea, they put it in the museum. There it's still to be seen, unless somebody has taken it.

There! That's a true story.

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