IV
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Mabie, Hamilton Wright, Forbush, William Byron, and Hale, Edward Everett
[page 399]
"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!"
[page 400]
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....