Grimm's Household Tales

There was once a shepherd boy whose fame spread far and wide because of the wise answers that he gave to every question. The King of the country heard of it too but did not believe it, and he sent for the boy. Then the King said to him, “If you can give me an answer to three questions that I will ask you, I will look on you as my own child, and you will live with me in my royal palace.” The boy said, “What are the three questions?” The King said, “The first is how many drops of water there are in the ocean.” The shepherd boy answered, “Lord King, if you have all the rivers on earth dammed up so that not a single drop runs from them into the sea until I have counted it, I will tell you how many drops there are in the sea.” The King said, “The next question is how many stars there are in the sky.” The shepherd boy said, “Give me a great sheet of white paper,” and then he made so many fine dots on it with a pen that they could scarcely be seen, and it was all but impossible to count them; people who looked at them would have lost their sight. Then he said, “There are as many stars in the sky as there are dots on the paper; just count them.” But no one was able to do it. The King said, “The third question is how many seconds of time there are in eternity.” Then the shepherd boy said, “In Lower Pomerania there is the Diamond Mountain, which is two and a half miles high, two and a half miles wide, and two and a half miles deep; every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the whole mountain is worn away by this, then the first second of eternity will be over.”

The King said, “You have answered the three questions like a wise man, and from now on you will live with me in my royal palace, and I will regard you as my own child.”