CHAPTER XXXII PINOCCHIO TURNS INTO A DONKEY The surprise was that Pinocchio, when he awoke, scratched his head, and in scratching his head he discovered, to his great astonishment, that his ears had grown more than a hand. You know that the puppet from his birth had always had very small ears--so small that they were not visible to the naked eye. You can imagine then what he felt when he found that during the night his ears had become so long that they seemed like two brooms. He went at once in search of a glass that he might look at himself, but, not being able to find one, he filled the basin of his washing-stand with water, and he saw reflected what he certainly would never have wished to see. He saw his head embellished with a magnificent pair of donkey's ears! Only think of poor Pinocchio's sorrow, shame and despair! He began to cry and roar, and he beat his head against the wall, but the more he cried the longer his ears grew; they grew, and grew, and became hairy towards the points. At the sound of his loud outcries a beautiful little Marmot that lived on the first floor came into the room. Seeing the puppet in such grief she asked earnestly: "What has happened to you, my dear fellow-lodger?" "I am ill, my dear little Marmot, very ill, and my illness frightens me. Do you understand counting a pulse?" "A little." "Then feel and see if by chance I have got fever." The little Marmot raised her right fore-paw, and, after having felt Pinocchio's pulse, she said to him, sighing: "My friend, I am grieved to be obliged to give you bad news!" "What is it?" "You have got a very bad fever!" "What fever is it?" "It is donkey fever." "That is a fever that I do not understand," said the puppet, but he understood it only too well. "Then I will explain it to you," said the Marmot. "You must know that in two or three hours you will be no longer a puppet, or a boy." "Then what shall I be?" "In two or three hours you will become really and truly a little donkey, like those that draw carts and carry cabbages and salad to market." "Oh, unfortunate that I am! unfortunate that I am!" cried Pinocchio, seizing his two ears with his hands and pulling them and tearing them furiously as if they had been some one else's ears. "My dear boy," said the Marmot, by way of consoling him, "you can do nothing. It is destiny. It is written in the decrees of wisdom that all boys who are lazy, and who take a dislike to books, to schools, and to masters, and who pass their time in amusement, games, and diversions, must end sooner or later by becoming transformed into so many little donkeys." "But is it really so?" asked the puppet, sobbing. "It is indeed only too true! And tears are now useless. You should have thought of it sooner!" "But it was not my fault; believe me, little Marmot, the fault was all Candlewick's!" "And who is this Candlewick?"