Page:Edmund Dulac's picture-book for the French Red cross.djvu/92

THE REAL PRINCESS And he was right.

One evening as he was sitting in his father's palace, studying books of far-off lands where princesses might be found, there came a fearful thunderstorm. The lightning grasped at the earth, spreading its roots down the walls of heaven; the thunder split and roared and rattled as if the ceiling was coming down; and, when the cloud-man unsealed his can and tipped it up, swish came the rain in torrents. Indeed, it was a fearful night.

When the storm had risen to the height of its fury a messenger came running to the king crying, 'Your Majesty gave orders that all gates be locked and barred, and opened to none; but some one without knocks and knocks and knocks, and will not go away.'

'I will go myself,' said the king, 'and see who it is that craves admittance in this fearful storm.'

So the king went down and opened the palace gates. What was his astonishment to see standing there a lovely maiden all forlorn, her long hair drenched with the rain, her beautiful clothes saturated and clinging to her form, while the water, trickling from them, ran out at her heels. She was in a terrible plight, but she was beautiful, and she said she was a princess—a real princess. Her mind was distracted: she could not remember how or whence she came, but, being a princess, and seeing the palace gates, she had run through the storm and knocked hard.

'A real princess,' said the king, looking her up and down 'Hm! I believe you, though the queen mightn't. Come in!'

The old queen received the visitor coldly and with a critical eye.

'We shall soon see if she is what she says she is,' thought she, but she said nothing. Then she went into the spare bedroom, and took off all the bed-clothes, and laid a pea on the bedstead. On top of this she piled mattress after mattress to the number of twenty, and then twenty feather beds on top of that. 'Now,' she said to herself, 'here she shall sleep, and we shall soon see in the morning whether she is a real princess or not.'

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