Geppetto lived in a small ground-floor room that was only lighted from
the staircase. The furniture could not have been simpler--a bad 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 painted a 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.
"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, took it
almost in bad part, and said in an angry voice:
"Wicked wooden eyes, why do you look at me?"
No one answered.
Then he 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, and 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 feet remained to be done.
When Geppetto had finished the feet he received a kick on the point of
the 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 flexible 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 leapt in front of him like a hare, and knocking
his wooden feet together against the pavement made as much clatter as
twenty pairs of peasant's clogs.
"Stop him! stop him!" shouted Geppetto; but the people in the street,
seeing a wooden puppet running like a racehorse stood still in
astonishment to look at it, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed,
until it beats description....