It was a young Princess that stood outside the gate. The wind and the
rain had almost blown her to pieces. Water streamed out of her hair and
out of her clothes. Water ran in at the points of her shoes and out
again at the heels. Yet she said that she was a _real_ Princess.

"Well, we will soon find out about that!" thought the Queen.

She said nothing, but went into the bedroom, took off all the bedding,
and put a small dried pea on the bottom of the bedstead. Then she piled
twenty mattresses on top of the pea, and on top of these she put twenty
feather beds. This was where the Princess had to sleep that night.

In the morning they asked her how she had slept through the night.

"Oh, miserably!" said the Princess. "I hardly closed my eyes the whole
night long! Goodness only knows what was in my bed! I slept upon
something so hard that I am black and blue all over. It was dreadful!"

So then they knew that she was a _real_ Princess. For, through the
twenty mattresses and the twenty feather beds, she had still felt the
pea. No one but a _real_ Princess could have had such a tender skin.

So the Prince took her for his wife. He knew now that he had a _real_
Princess.

As for the pea, it was put in a museum where it may still be seen if no
one has carried it away.

Now this is a true story!

193

With some dozen exceptions, all of Andersen's
_Tales_ are based upon older stories, either
upon some old folk tale or upon something that
he ran across in his reading. Dr. Brandes, in
his _Eminent Authors_, shows in detail how "The
Emperor's New Clothes" came into being. "One
day in turning over the leaves of Don Manuel's
_Count Lucanor_, Andersen became charmed by the
homely wisdom of the old Spanish story, with
the delicate flavor of the Middle Ages
pervading it, and he lingered over chapter vii,
which treats of how a king was served by three
rogues." But Andersen's story is a very
different one in many ways from his Spanish
original. For one thing, the meaning is so
universal that no one can miss it. Most of us
have, in all likelihood, at some time pretended
to know what we do not know or to be what we
are not in order to save our face, to avoid the
censure or ridicule of others. "There is much
concerning which people dare not speak the