Geppetto, not to spoil his handiwork, pretended not to see and continued
his labors. After the mouth he fashioned the chin, then the throat, then
the shoulders, the stomach, the arms and the hands.
The hands were scarcely finished when Geppetto felt his wig snatched
from his head. He turned round, and what did he see? He saw his yellow
wig in the puppet's hand.
"Pinocchio! Give me back my wig instantly!"
But Pinocchio, instead of returning it, put it on his own head and was
in consequence nearly smothered.
Geppetto at this insolent and derisive behavior felt sadder and more
melancholy than he had ever been in his life before; and, turning to
Pinocchio, he said to him:
"You young rascal! You are not yet completed and you are already
beginning to show want of respect to your father! That is bad, my boy,
very bad!"
And he dried a tear.
The legs and the feet remained to be done.
When Geppetto had finished the feet he received a kick on the point of
his nose.
"I deserve it!" he said to himself; "I should have thought of it sooner!
Now it is too late!"
He then took the puppet under the arms and placed him on the floor to
teach him to walk.
Pinocchio's legs were stiff and he could not move, but Geppetto led him
by the hand and showed him how to put one foot before the other.
When his legs became limber Pinocchio began to walk by himself and to
run about the room, until, having gone out of the house door, he jumped
into the street and escaped.
Poor Geppetto rushed after him but was not able to overtake him, for
that rascal Pinocchio leaped in front of him like a hare and knocking
his wooden feet together against the pavement made as much clatter as
twenty pairs of peasants' clogs.
"Stop him! stop him!" shouted Geppetto; but the people in the street,
seeing a wooden puppet running like a race-horse, stood still in
astonishment to look at it, and laughed and laughed.
At last, as good luck would have it, a soldier arrived who, hearing the
uproar, imagined that a colt had escaped from his master. Planting
himself courageously with his legs apart in the middle of the road, he
waited with the determined purpose of stopping him and thus preventing
the chance of worse disasters.
When Pinocchio, still at some distance, saw the soldier barricading the
whole street, he endeavored to take him by surprise and to pass between
his legs. But he failed entirely.
The soldier without disturbing himself in the least caught him cleverly
by the nose and gave him to Geppetto. Wishing to punish him, Geppetto
intended to pull his ears at once. But imagine his feelings when he
could not succeed in finding them. And do you know the reason? In his
hurry to model him he had forgotten to make any ears.
He then took him by the collar and as he was leading him away he said to
him, shaking his head threateningly:
"We will go home at once, and as soon as we arrive we will settle our
accounts, never doubt it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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