GEPPETTO NAMES HIS PUPPET PINOCCHIO
Geppetto lived in a small ground-floor room that was only lighted from
the staircase. The furniture could not have been simpler--a rickety
chair, a poor bed, and a broken-down table. At the end of the room there
was a fireplace with a lighted fire; but the fire was painted, and by
the fire was a painted saucepan that was boiling cheerfully and sending
out a cloud of smoke that looked exactly like real smoke.
As soon as he reached home Geppetto took his tools and set to work to
cut out and model his puppet.
[Illustration: A Little Chicken Popped Out, Very Gay and Polite]
"What name shall I give him?" he said to himself; "I think I will call
him Pinocchio. It is a name that will bring him luck. I once knew a
whole family so called. There was Pinocchio the father, Pinocchia the
mother, and Pinocchi the children, and all of them did well. The
richest of them was a beggar."
Having found a name for his puppet he began to work in good earnest, and
he first made his hair, then his forehead, and then his eyes.
The eyes being finished, imagine his astonishment when he perceived that
they moved and looked fixedly at him.
Geppetto, seeing himself stared at by those two wooden eyes, said in an
angry voice:
"Wicked wooden eyes, why do you look at me?"
No one answered.
He then proceeded to carve the nose, but no sooner had he made it than
it began to grow. And it grew, and grew, and grew, until in a few
minutes it had become an immense nose that seemed as if it would never
end.
Poor Geppetto tired himself out with cutting it off, but the more he cut
and shortened it, the longer did that impertinent nose become!
The mouth was not even completed when it began to laugh and deride him.
"Stop laughing!" said Geppetto, provoked; but he might as well have
spoken to the wall.
"Stop laughing, I say!" he roared in a threatening tone.
The mouth then ceased laughing, but put out its tongue as far as it
would go.
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."
At this information Pinocchio threw himself on the ground and would not
take another step. In the meanwhile a crowd of idlers and inquisitive
people began to assemble and to make a ring around them.
Some of them said one thing, some another.
"Poor puppet!" said several, "he is right not to wish to return home!
Who knows how Geppetto, that bad old man, will beat him!"
And the others added maliciously:
"Geppetto seems a good man! but with boys he is a regular tyrant! If
that poor puppet is left in his hands he is quite capable of tearing him
in pieces!"
It ended in so much being said and done that the soldier at last set
Pinocchio at liberty and led Geppetto to prison. The poor man, not being
ready with words to defend himself, cried like a calf and as he was
being led away to prison sobbed out:
"Wretched boy! And to think how I labored to make him a well-conducted
puppet! But it serves me right! I should have thought of it sooner!"
[Illustration]