But Pinocchio remained. Although from grief and fright he was more dead than alive, nevertheless he ran and soaked his handkerchief in the sea and began to bathe the temples of his poor school-fellow. Crying bitterly in his despair, he kept calling him by name and saying to him: "Eugene! my poor Eugene! Open your eyes and look at me! Why do you not answer? I did not do it; indeed it was not I that hurt you so! believe me, it was not! Open your eyes, Eugene. If you keep your eyes shut I shall die, too. Oh! what shall I do? how shall I ever return home? How can I ever have the courage to go back to my good mamma? What will become of me? Where can I fly to? Oh! how much better it would have been, a thousand times better, if I had only gone to school! Why did I listen to my companions? they have been my ruin. The master said to me, and my mamma repeated it often: 'Beware of bad companions!' Oh, dear! what will become of me, what will become of me, what will become of me?" And Pinocchio began to cry and sob, and to strike his head with his fists, and to call poor Eugene by his name. Suddenly he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. He turned and saw two soldiers. "What are you doing there, lying on the ground?" they asked Pinocchio. "I am helping my school-fellow." "Has he been hurt?" "So it seems." "Hurt indeed!" said one of them, stooping down and examining Eugene closely. "This boy has been wounded in the temple. Who wounded him?" "Not I," stammered the puppet breathlessly. "If it was not you, who then did it?" "Not I," repeated Pinocchio. "And with what was he wounded?" "With this book." And the puppet picked up from the ground the Treatise on Arithmetic, bound in cardboard and parchment, and showed it to the soldier. "And to whom does this belong?" "To me." "That is enough, nothing more is wanted. Get up and come with us at once." "But I--" "Come along with us!" "But I am innocent." "Come along with us!" Before they left, the soldiers called some fishermen who were passing at that moment near the shore in their boat, and said to them: "We give this boy who has been wounded in the head in your charge. Carry him to your house and nurse him. Tomorrow we will come and see him." They then turned to Pinocchio and, having placed him between them, they said to him in a commanding voice: "Forward! and walk quickly, or it will be the worse for you." Without requiring it to be repeated, the puppet set out along the road leading to the village. But the poor little devil hardly knew where he was. He thought he must be dreaming, and what a dreadful dream! He was beside himself. He saw double; his legs shook; his tongue clung to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a word. And yet, in the midst of his stupefaction and apathy, his heart was pierced by a cruel thorn--the thought that he would pass under the windows of the good Fairy's house between the soldiers. He would rather have died.