Now they knew at once that she was a real princess, since through twenty mattresses and through twenty eider-down quilts she had felt the pea. None but a real princess could be so sensitive.
So the prince took her for his wife, for he knew that at last in her he had found a real princess. And the pea was put in the Royal Museum, where it is still to be seen unless some one has stolen it.
And this, mind you, is a true story. [[17]]
THE FROG PRINCE
In olden times there lived a King whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so lovely that the sun himself wondered at her beauty every time he looked into her face.
Near to the King’s castle lay a dark, gloomy forest; and in the forest, under an old linden tree, was a fountain. When the day was very hot the King’s daughter used to go into the wood and sit down by the side of the cool fountain. Her favorite amusement, as she sat there, was to toss a golden ball up into the air and catch it again. Once she threw it so high that, instead of falling into the hand that she stretched out for it, it dropped upon the ground and rolled straight into the water.
The King’s daughter followed it with her eyes as long as she could, but it disappeared, for the well was so deep that she could not [[18]]see the bottom. Then she began to cry bitterly for her ball.
As she sat weeping she heard a voice calling: “What is the matter, King’s daughter? Your tears would touch the heart of a stone.”
She looked round towards the spot whence the voice came and saw a frog stretching his thick, ugly head out of the water.
“Oh, it is you, is it, old water-paddler!” she said. “Well, then, I am crying for the loss of my golden ball which has fallen into the fountain.”