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Once upon a time there was a lowly footman who was determined to ignore the insistent knocking at the castle door. A storm was shrieking outside, and he couldn’t imagine what good could come from answering the door. So the queen, after shooting the footman a withering look, opened the door herself.
There on the threshold stood a beautiful yet bedraggled young maiden. Her hair snaked across her shoulders in slithering rivulets of rain, her cape clung to her body, and her felt shoes had nearly disintegrated. She apologized for her dishevelment and for the lateness of hour. She was a princess, she explained. She had gotten lost on the way back to her own kingdom and was hoping to take shelter for the night.
Well, the queen happened to have an opening for a princess, one who could marry the ne’er-do-well prince, her only son, and perhaps make something of him. And indeed the prince seemed smitten by the unexpected visitor. But a terrible rash of princess poseurs had been plaguing the kingdom lately, and the queen needed confirmation that the young woman was a true princess.
So before the princess retired for the night, the queen conducted an imperial test. She placed a Living Bra on the guest bed and, with the help of her maids, piled twenty quilts and twenty mattresses on top. Only a true princess, she knew, could detect the presence of a Living Bra under so many layers. The princess looked bewildered when she saw the sleeping arrangements, but she climbed the ladder in quiet acquiescence.
The next morning the princess looked downright haggard. “I tossed and turned all night,” she told the queen. “I’m just certain there was something alive under all those quilts and mattresses!” The delighted queen instructed the prince to marry the young maiden, and so he did.
A week after the wedding, as the maids were disassembling all those quilts and mattresses, they found a dead rat under the first mattress.
