Grimms' Fairy Tales

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twelve beds all in one room; and when they went to bed, the doors were
shut and locked up; but every morning their shoes were found to be quite
worn through as if they had been danced in all night; and yet nobody
could find out how it happened, or where they had been.

Then the king made it known to all the land, that if any person could
discover the secret, and find out where it was that the princesses
danced in the night, he should have the one he liked best for his
wife, and should be king after his death; but whoever tried and did not
succeed, after three days and nights, should be put to death.

A king's son soon came. He was well entertained, and in the evening was
taken to the chamber next to the one where the princesses lay in their
twelve beds. There he was to sit and watch where they went to dance;
and, in order that nothing might pass without his hearing it, the door
of his chamber was left open. But the king's son soon fell asleep; and
when he awoke in the morning he found that the princesses had all been