H. C. Andersen best fairy tales / Лучшие сказки Г.Х. Андерсена. Уровень 1

She was standing outside. But what a figure she was with the rain and bad weather! The water ran all down her hair and her clothes and in at the toes of her shoes and out at the heels. She said she was a real Princess.

“Ah, we’ll check it”, thought the old Queen to herself.

But she didn’t say anything. She went into the bedroom, took all the clothes off the bed and laid one dried pea on the bottom of the bed. Then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on top of the pea, and then twenty eiderdowns on top of the mattresses.

There the Princess was sleeping that night.

In the morning they ask her how she was sleeping.

“Oh, dreadfully badly,” said the Princess; “I hardly closed my eyes the whole night! There was something terrible in my bed! There was something hard I lay on. It’s quite dreadful”.

Then everybody could see that this was a real Princess. She felt the pea through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eiderdowns. Nobody could have such a tender skin but a real Princess.

So the Prince married her. Now he knew that he had a real Princess.

They put the pea in the treasure chamber, where everyone can see it nowadays.

The Little Mermaid

Far out in the sea the water is as blue as the petals of the cornflowers, and as clear as the clearest glass. But it is very deep, deeper than any anchor-cable can reach. Down there live the sea people.

Now you must not think that there is only a white sandy bottom there. No, no: there the most extraordinary trees and plants grow, which have stems and leaves.

They stir at the slightest movement of the water. All the fish, big and little, flit among the branches, like the birds in the air up here.

In the deepest place of all lies the sea king’s palace. The walls are of coral, and the tall windows are of the clearest amber. But the roof is of mussel-shells. They open and shut themselves as the water moves. It all looks beautiful, for in every shell lie shining pearls.

A single one of these pearls can be the principal ornament in a Queen’s crown.

The sea King is a widower for many years. His old mother kept house for him. She was a clever woman, and proud of her rank. She was fond of the little sea Princesses, her grandchildren. There were six of them, beautiful children, but the youngest was the prettiest of them all. Her skin was as bright and pure as a rose-leaf, her eyes were as blue as the deepest lake.