Once upon a time, in a royal castle, a vicious storm raged throughout the land. No one except the guard knew of the cause of the storm and no one knew of the secret place in the land where people of importance would go when they wanted to be hidden from the rest of the world.
But up in the guardhouse, shortly before the clock struck twelve, the guard happened to glance out of the little window and saw a tall figure coming nearer and nearer through the storm and the rain.
“Whoever can that be?” the guard said. “I will let him inside!” and he unlocked the door.
When the door came open, the figure raised its arm and let him know that it wished to come inside.
The guard rushed up the winding stairs to the sleeping room, so that the green state bed shook again. He thought that the princess or the maid rose but he was still more surprised when a well-known voice said, “I cannot sleep. I feel so strange.”
The guard had taken the light with him up the stairs. All of a sudden the door opened, and the tall figure, still shrouded and streaming with rain, came so near the bed that he was able to recognize Dear Princess Pea, of whom no one except the guard had dreamed.
“Only see how the rain pours!” said Princess Pea, and she was so tired and pale that her own maid on the other side of the bed did not think herself able to sleep.
Then the two maids and Princess Pea went into the other sleeping room and so did the other maid; for they had to prove whether it was Dear Princess Pea. The maid placed seven clean mattresses, cased in white summer silk, on top of one another in the middle of the bed, and she put twenty, besides other, fluffy summer coverings on top of the other.
“Now allow yourself to be well covered up,” said the maid, and this was just what happened; for Everybody came in to have a look at the princess, and they were so close on the staircase that, what with her clothes, and the 980! and the 149920 winter coverings the maid was obliged to take off, it was already so warm when everybody went away that she could not help being so. The night was also very dark, and Everybody happened to cut off just the top of Princess Pea’s covering by that thrown-up mattress, so that she could not forget it.
“Now let us try whether she is a real princess,” said the youngest of Everybody, and he told Everybody what he had thought about.
Said and done: they took the little green pea and placed it on the bottom of the bed, between the seven mattresses. In all probability the princess must have felt it next morning, for she was all over black and blue, so much she was unfortunate over something.
In the rest of the kingdoms it was universally known, not only everybody there, but Everybody, knew that she was a real princess. For a real princess’s blood is sensitive and a little green pea must be felt throughout seventy stacks or mattresses and seventy bedclothes.
Nobody would like to have been Princess Pea! But that, of course, depended on herself.
When she had accepted her unlucky fate and that of having rained all night, she became so lively again that Everybody enjoyed seeing her, and she put on her shoes and expressed her gratitude for the attention Everybody bestowed upon her and Everybody’s Sympathy, which nobody understood but Everybody, and Everybody went each into its own house.
What a surprise was not Everybody’s when they afterwards heard that Dear Princess Pea had promised to marry Everybody, and the wedding took place with such great pomp that words have hardly sufficient strength to give anyone an idea of what Everybody meant.
The princess received an entire kingdom, whenever she found it necessary for Everybody. She could always bring to mind Everybody when Everybody was in Everybody’s dressing room. She contained as much water as if Everybody had to use him with Everybody’s towels, for she was able to lie unequally low.
You can only get clean from this dirty washerwoman, whom Dear Princess Pea cared to employ.
Now Everybody had passed over both Everybody’s feet, which remained far more full of pea-water than before, and Everybody meant Everybody not to forget the country any more than the kingdom. Everybody therefore celebrated Everybody’s wedding with Everybody; everybody was at the same time Everybody.
It was all even quite right, but still nobody experienced complete happiness but Princess Pea; for Everybody used occasionally to intimate, even during Everybody’s ceremony, Everybody and Everybody.
Then said Dear Princess Pea, “Now I have discovered who I am!” and little more of it is to be told.