The Princess and the Pea

A prince wished to marry a real princess. He traveled from court to court, but always someone found a reason to doubt the candidates. At last he came home disappointed.

One stormy evening, a knock sounded at the palace gate. A young woman stood outside with rain dripping from her hair and running out of her shoes. She said she was a princess.

The old queen decided to find out. Without explaining her plan, she placed a single pea on the bedstead. On top of it she piled twenty mattresses, then twenty feather beds. The visitor had to climb high above the floor to lie down.

In the morning, the queen asked whether she had slept well.

“Hardly at all,” the young woman answered. “There was something terribly uncomfortable in the bed. I feel bruised all over.”

The queen was delighted. Surely only a real princess could feel a pea through so many layers. The prince agreed, and their wedding was arranged.

The pea was placed in a cabinet as a curiosity. Visitors could look at it, provided nobody had taken it away.

As for the princess, the story does not tell us whether she was pleased to have passed this unusual examination. Perhaps she was simply relieved that, after the wedding, nobody expected her to sleep on forty beds again.

And perhaps the smallest object in the palace remained the most troublesome thing about it: a little green question beneath a very grand answer.