Peleș Castle in the Carpathian Mountains, Romania.
ONCE upon a time, a prince decided to find himself a princess, or rather (as he told himself) a real princess.
For the princesses of the neighbouring kingdoms were not at all what he imagined a princess should be, and soon he was quite discouraged.
One stormy night, there came a knock on the palace doors. On the threshold stood a bedraggled young woman, who nonetheless assured the queen that she was a princess.
‘We will see about that,’ said the queen to herself. So she took a pea along to the guest bedroom, and popped it under the mattress. Then she piled twenty more mattresses on top of that one.
In the morning the queen asked the girl how she had slept. ‘Oh! barely a wink’ she cried. ‘I seemed to be lying upon some hard thing, heaven knows what, and this morning I am simply black and blue.’
And the queen knew that her son had at last found a real princess.