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.
