Stranica 42 [42]
VI
PINOCCHIO FALLS ASLEEP WITH HIS FEET ON
THE BRAZIER, AND WAKES IN THE MORNING
TO FIND THEM BURNT OFE
T was a wild and stormy winter’s night.
The thunder was tremendous and the
lightning so vivid that the sky seemed on
fire. A bitter blusterous wind whistled angrily,
and raising clouds of dust swept over the coun¬
try, causing the trees to creak and groan as it
passed.
Pinocchio had a great fear of thunder, but
hunger was stronger than fear. He therefore
closed the house door and made a rush for the
village, which he reached in a hundred bounds,
with his tongue hanging out and panting for
breath, like a dog after game.
But he found it all dark and deserted. The
shops were closed, the windows shut, and there
was not so much as a dog in the street. It
seemed the land of the dead.
Pinocchio, urged by desperation and hun¬
ger, laid hold of the bell of a house and began
to peal it with all his might, saying to himself:
“That will bring somebody.”
And so it did. A little old man appeared
at a window with a nightcap on his head, and
called to him angrily:
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