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The Princess and the Pea
by Hans Christian Andersen
(1835)
Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to
marry a princess; but she would have to be a real
princess. He travelled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get
what he wanted. There were princesses enough, 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, for he would have liked very
much to have a real princess.
One evening a terrible storm came on; there was
thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly a knocking
was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.
It was a princess standing out there in front of
the gate. But, good gracious! what a sight the rain and the wind had made her
look. The water ran down from her hair and clothes; it ran down into the toes of
her shoes and out again at the heels. And yet she said that she was a real
princess.
“Well, we'll soon find that out,” thought the
old queen. But she said nothing, went into the bed-room, took all the bedding
off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses
and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds on top of the
mattresses.
On this the princess had to lie all night. In
the morning she was asked how she had slept.
“Oh, very badly!” said she. “I have scarcely
closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying
on something hard, so that I am black and blue 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
eider-down beds.
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; and the pea was put in the museum, where it
may still be seen, if no one has stolen it.
There, that is a true story.
The End
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