1 files changed, 4848 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/41446-0.txt b/41446-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14946b9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/41446-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4848 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41446 ***
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
+
+  The frequent use of ellipses has been retained as printed.
+
+  On page 19, "I had better tried" should possibly be "I had better
+  try".
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF PINOCCHIO
+
+  [Illustration: "BUT SMELL THIS" ... AND WHILE HE SPOKE THE RASCAL OF
+   A PINOCCHIO TOOK IN BOTH HIS HANDS THE DISH AND HELD IT CLOSE TO
+   STOLZ'S NOSE]
+
+
+
+
+     THE HEART OF
+     PINOCCHIO
+
+     _New Adventures of the
+     Celebrated Little Puppet_
+
+     _By_
+
+     COLLODI NIPOTE
+     (_Paolo Lorenzini_)
+
+     _Adapted from the Italian by_
+     VIRGINIA WATSON
+
+     _With Drawings by
+     J. R. Flanagan_
+
+     HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+     NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+_The Twilight Series_
+
+Imaginative Stories and Fairy Tales
+
+Illustrated--Jackets Printed in Colors
+
+     THE HOLLOW TREE AND DEEP WOODS BOOK. By A. B. Paine
+     THE HOLLOW TREE SNOWED-IN BOOK. By A. B. Paine
+     HOLLOW TREE NIGHTS AND DAYS. By A. B. Paine
+     ALICE IN WONDERLAND. By Lewis Carroll
+     THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS. By Lewis Carroll
+     HOME FAIRY TALES. By Jean Mace
+     DANISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. By J. Christian Bay
+     FAVORITE FAIRY TALES. Illustrated by Peter Newell
+     TWILIGHT LAND. By Howard Pyle
+     THE DWARF'S TAILOR. By Zoe Dana Underhill
+     FAIRY BOOK. By Edouard Laboulaye
+     LAST FAIRY TALES. By Edouard Laboulaye
+     PINOCCHIO. By Carlo Collodi
+     THE HEART OF PINOCCHIO. By Collodi Nipote
+     THE WATER BABIES. By Charles Kingsley
+
+
+THE HEART OF PINOCCHIO
+
+
+     Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers
+     Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     CHAP.                                                        PAGE
+
+     I. _How Pinocchio Discovered that He Had a Heart and Had
+     Become a Real Boy_                                              1
+
+     II. _How Pinocchio Recognized the Advantages of His
+     Wooden Body_                                                   22
+
+     III. _How Pinocchio Sent a Solemn Protest to Francis
+     Joseph to Rectify an Official Bulletin_                        33
+
+     IV. _How Pinocchio Learned that War Changes Everything--Even
+     the Meaning of Words_                                          62
+
+     V. _In Which Pinocchio Discovers that Sometimes When You
+     Want to Advance You Have to Take a Step Backward_              78
+
+     VI. _Wherein We See Pinocchio's Heart_                         92
+
+     VII. _How Pinocchio Came Face to Face with Our Alpine
+     Troops_                                                       110
+
+     VIII. _How Pinocchio Made Two Beasts Sing--Contrary to
+     Nature_                                                       135
+
+     IX. _How Pinocchio Complained Because He Was No Longer
+     a Wooden Puppet_                                              151
+
+     X. _Many Deeds and Few Words_                                 177
+
+     XI. _And Now--Finished or Not Finished_                       199
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+     "_But smell this_" ... _and while he spoke the
+     rascal of a Pinocchio took in both hands the
+     dish and held it close to Stolz's nose_            _Frontispiece_
+
+     "_I see the suet-eaters_"                        _Facing page_ 36
+
+     _He saw a rag tied to a pole waving_                "          42
+
+     "_You beastly little creature, what game are you
+     playing?_"                                          "          46
+
+     _One day he managed to capture a pig and to drag
+     it along behind him_                                "          62
+
+     _His foot caught Cutemup right in the stomach and
+     knocked him breathless_                             "          88
+
+     _Pinocchio did his best to get on his feet, but
+     couldn't succeed_                                   "         116
+
+     _Ciampanella, the company cook_                     "         134
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Dear Boys and Girls,--Let us hope that none of you has been so
+unfortunate as to have missed the pleasure of watching sometime or
+other a puppet show. Probably Punch and Judy is the one you know best,
+but there are many others with jolly little fellows who dance in and
+out of all sorts of adventures. So you can imagine Pinocchio, the hero
+of this book, as one of those lively puppets. And, in case you have
+never read the earlier book about him, you will want to know something
+of what happened to him before you meet him in these pages.
+
+One day a poor carpenter, called Master Cherry, began to cut up a
+piece of wood to make a table-leg of it when, to his utmost amazement,
+the piece of wood cried out, "Do not strike me so hard!" The
+frightened carpenter stopped for a moment, and when he began again and
+struck the wood a blow with his ax the voice cried out once more,
+"Oh, oh! you have hurt me so!" The carpenter was now so terrified that
+he was only too glad to turn the piece of wood over to a neighbor,
+Papa Geppetto, who cut it up into the shape of a boy puppet, painted
+it, and named it Pinocchio--which means "a piece of pinewood." As soon
+as he had finished making him, Pinocchio grabbed the old man's wig off
+his head and started in to play tricks. Papa Geppetto then taught the
+puppet to walk, and when naughty Pinocchio discovered he could use his
+legs, he ran away. Then began all kinds of adventures, and Pinocchio
+was sometimes naughty and selfish, and sometimes kind and considerate,
+but always funny and jolly.
+
+In this new book Pinocchio's heart has grown through love and
+consideration for others, so that he becomes a real boy and takes part
+in the war to help his beautiful country, Italy.
+
+     THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF PINOCCHIO
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF PINOCCHIO
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_How Pinocchio Discovered That He Had a Heart and Had Become a Real
+Boy_
+
+
+He yawned, stuck out his tongue and licked the end of his nose, opened
+his eyes, shut them again, opened them once more and rubbed them
+vigorously with the back of his hand, jumped up, and then sat down on
+the sofa, listening intently for several minutes, after which he
+scratched his noddle solemnly. When Pinocchio scratched his head in
+this way you could be sure that there was trouble in the air. And so
+there was. The room was empty, the windows closed, and the door as
+well; no noise came from the still quiet street; a deep silence
+filled the air, yet there, right there, close to him, he heard queer
+sounds like blows--tick-tock ... tick-tock ... tick-tock ...
+tick-tock.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+It sounded like some one who was amusing himself by rapping with his
+knuckles on a wooden box--tick-tock ... tick-tock ... tick-tock.
+
+"But who is it?" called out the puppet, suddenly, jumping down from
+the sofa and running to peer into every corner of the room. When he
+had knocked over the chest, rummaged the wardrobe with the mirror,
+upset the little table, turned over the chairs, pulled the pictures
+off the walls, and torn down the window-curtains, he found himself
+seated on the floor in the middle of the room, dead tired, his face
+all smeared with dust and spider-webs, his shirt in tatters, his
+tongue hanging out like a pointer's returning from the hunt. Yet
+there, close to him, he still heard that strange tick-tock ...
+tick-tock ... tick-tock ... and it seemed as if those mysterious
+fingers were rapping even more quickly upon the mysterious wooden box.
+Pinocchio would have pulled his hair out in desperation if Papa
+Geppetto hadn't forgotten to make him any. But as the desperation of
+puppets lasts just about as long as the joy of poor human beings,
+Pinocchio, laying his right forefinger on the point of his magnificent
+nose, calmly remarked:
+
+"Let me argue this out. There is no one else in here but me. I am
+keeping perfectly quiet, not even drawing a long breath, yet the noise
+keeps up.... Then, since it is not I who am making the noise, some one
+else must be making it, and as no one outside me is making it,
+whatever makes it must be inside me."
+
+This seemed reasonable, but Pinocchio, who had not expected he would
+come to such a conclusion, gave a start, kicked violently, and began
+to roll around on the ground, yelling as if he would split his throat:
+"Help! Help!" The thought had suddenly come to him that during the
+night a mouse had jumped into his mouth and down into his stomach and
+was searching about in it for some way to get out. But the quieter he
+kept the noisier grew the tick-tock; in fact, so loud that it seemed
+to cut off his breath. Fear made him calm.
+
+"Let me argue this out," he said again, laying his forefinger against
+his nose. "It cannot be a mouse; the movement is too regular, so
+regular that if I weren't sure that I went to bed without supper I
+should think I had swallowed Papa Geppetto's watch by mistake.... Hm!
+If he hadn't told me time and time again that I am only a little
+puppet without a heart I should almost believe that I had one down
+inside me, and that this tick-tock were indeed ..."
+
+"Just so!"
+
+"Who said 'Just so'? Who said 'Just so'?" called Pinocchio, looking
+around in terror. Naturally no one answered him.
+
+"Hm! Did I dream it?" he asked himself. "And even if there is any one
+who thinks he can frighten me with his 'just so' he will find himself
+much mistaken. A brave boy does not know what fear is, and I begin to
+think ...
+
+"'Just so' or not 'just so,' if any one has anything to say to me let
+him come forward and he will learn what kind of blows I can give."
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+He turned round and stepped back a few steps. It seemed to him that
+some one was making a threatening gesture at him. Without hesitating a
+moment, he rushed forward with his head down, thrashing out blows like
+a madman. Then he heard a terrible smashing of glass. Pinocchio had
+hit out at his own image in the wardrobe mirror, which naturally was
+shattered to bits. There is no need for me to tell you how he felt,
+because you will have no trouble in picturing it for yourselves.
+
+"But how did I come to make such a blunder?" he asked himself, as soon
+as he had recovered from his surprise. "How did I happen not to
+recognize myself in the mirror? Am I really so changed...? Can I
+indeed be changed into a real little boy or am I a puppet as I always
+was?"
+
+"Just so! Just so! Just so!"
+
+This time there could be no doubt about it. Pinocchio sprang toward
+the window, opened it, and stuck his head out. There below, a few feet
+lower down, was a beautiful terrace covered with flowering plants. In
+the midst of the plants was a stand, and on the stand a magnificent
+green parrot who just at that moment was scratching under his beak
+with his claw, and looking around him with one eye open. Down in the
+street below there was not a soul to be seen.
+
+"Oh, you ugly beast! Was it you who was chattering 'just so, just so,
+just so'?"
+
+The parrot burst out into a crazy laugh and began to sing in his
+cracked voice:
+
+     "Coccorito wants to know
+     Who the glass gave such a blow.
+     Coccorito knows it well
+     And the master he will tell."
+
+"Hah! Hah! Hah!" And he burst out into another guffaw. Patience, which
+is the only heritage of donkeys, was certainly not Pinocchio's
+principal virtue. Moreover, the parrot laughed in such a rude manner
+that he would have annoyed Jove himself.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"Stop it, idiot!"
+
+"Idiot, idiot, 'yot, 'yot."
+
+"Beast!"
+
+"Beast!"
+
+"Take care ..."
+
+"Take ca-a-a-re."
+
+"I'll give it to you."
+
+"You, you, you."
+
+     "Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!
+     Who the glass gave such a blow?
+     Coccorito knows it well
+     And the master he will tell."
+
+"Will you? I'll make you shut up. Take this, you horrid beast!"
+
+There was a large terra-cotta pot with a fine plant of basil in it
+standing on the window-sill, and the furious Pinocchio seized it in
+both hands and hurled it down with all his force. Coccorito would have
+come to a sad ending if the god of parrots had not protected his
+topknot. The flower-pot grazed the stand and was shattered against the
+marble parapet, and the pieces, falling down, hit against the large
+stained-glass window opening on to the terrace and broke it.
+
+Pinocchio, who could hardly believe that he had done so much damage,
+stood still a moment and gazed stupidly at the pile of broken pieces
+and at the parrot, who laughed as if he would burst. But when
+Pinocchio saw a big officer rush angrily over the terrace, with his
+hair brushed up on his head, a huge mustache beneath his curved nose,
+and a thick switch in his hand, he was seized with such a fright that
+he threw over his shoulders the first thing in the way of clothing he
+could lay his hand on, rushed to the door, opened it with a kick, ran
+through a small room adjoining, sped down the stairs at breakneck
+speed, flung open the street door and--Heavens! He felt a violent
+blow on his stomach and, as if hurled from a catapult, he was thrown
+into the air and fell down the rest of the steps, his legs out before
+him. But he didn't stay still when he got to the bottom. He sprang up
+like a jack-in-the-box, rubbed himself on the injured part, and was
+off again. He seemed to see some one strolling there in the middle of
+the street; he thought he heard himself called twice or thrice by a
+well-known voice, but the fear which was driving him bade him run, and
+he ran with all the strength he had in his body.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+Poor Papa Geppetto! It was indeed he who was strolling in the middle
+of the street and who, seeing Pinocchio flying out of the house like a
+madman, wrapped in a flowered chintz curtain, had called to him
+imploringly.
+
+And so it was--in his hurry Pinocchio had thrown over his shoulders
+one of the curtains of his room, and if I must tell you all the
+truth, he was a perfectly comical sight. Soon Pinocchio had a string
+of people at his heels crying out: "Catch the madman! Give it to the
+madman!"
+
+Catch him! That was easy to say, but it was no easy matter to grab
+hold of the rascal. Indeed, his pursuers were soon weary, and
+Pinocchio might have thought himself safe if a dog hadn't suddenly
+joined in the game. It was a large jet-black poodle that had come from
+no one knew where. With a couple of bounds he had caught up with
+Pinocchio and had seized the curtain in his teeth and was dragging it
+through the dust. Suddenly he stiffened on his four legs and Pinocchio
+gave a little whirl and found himself face to face with the animal.
+
+"Ho, ho, ho! What do I see? Oh, Medoro, don't you recognize me? Give
+me your paw."
+
+Medoro growled and shook the curtain violently, which was still
+knotted about Pinocchio's waist. It was only then that he noticed the
+strange covering he had on and burst out laughing.
+
+"Oh, Medoro! What do you really want to do with this rag? I'll give it
+to you willingly."
+
+He had scarcely undone the knots when Medoro made a spring and was off
+down the street they had come, the curtain in his teeth. The puppet
+stood there, quite upset. Medoro had given him a lesson. The dog that
+had been so friendly had turned on him and, after having pulled the
+miserable old curtain off him, had made off without paying any further
+attention to his old friend.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"A fine way of doing!" he grumbled. "I'll catch cold running around
+after that rag. Papa Geppetto won't even thank him.... I had better
+tried to mend the mirror of the wardrobe or the general's window."
+
+The thought of all the troubles he had caused the poor man in so short
+a time made Pinocchio rather melancholy, and two big tears shone in
+his bright little eyes. But suddenly he sighed a deep sigh, shrugged
+his shoulders several times, and with his head high and his hands on
+his hips, set off again on his way, whistling a popular song.
+
+He had not gone a hundred steps when he stopped suddenly, cocked his
+ear, listened a moment quietly, and then flung himself into the fields
+which bordered the street. The wind brought from far off the gay notes
+of a military band.
+
+There was a huge crowd, but Pinocchio didn't give that a thought, in
+spite of the fact that he was very tired with his long run. By pushing
+and poking and kicks in the shins he got up into the front row.
+Soldiers were passing. At the head was a company of bicycle
+sharpshooters (bersaglieri), then the band, then the regiment, the Red
+Cross ambulance, and soldiers, and a long line of sappers. Everybody
+clapped, threw kisses and flowers, and overwhelmed the bersaglieri
+with little gifts. The soldiers broke ranks and mingled with the crowd
+and answered the applause with loud cheers for Italy, the King, and
+the Army. Some of them marched along in the midst of their families;
+weeping mothers begged their sons to be careful; the fathers bade them
+be brave, reminding them of the fighting in '48, '66, '70--the
+glorious years of our emancipation. The little boys kept close to
+their fathers, proud to see them armed like the heroes of old legends,
+and many of the girls besought their sweethearts: "Write to me, won't
+you? Every day I want you to write to me. If I don't get letters from
+you I shall think that you are dead and I shall weep so bitterly."
+
+Dead! This word affected Pinocchio so that suddenly he felt his heart
+beating loudly--that strange tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock which had
+startled him earlier that morning.
+
+Dead? "Oh! where are they going?" he asked a sprightly old man who was
+standing near by, shouting, "Hurrah for Italy!" as if he were a boy.
+
+"They are going to the war."
+
+"Are they really off to war? Will they fire only powder from their
+guns, or real, lead bullets, too?"
+
+"Indeed yes, real bullets, too."
+
+"And will they all die?"
+
+"We hope not all of them--but they are going to fight for the honor
+and greatness of their country, and he who dies for his country may
+die happy."
+
+Pinocchio did not breathe. He scratched his head solemnly, and with
+his eyes and mouth made such a face that if the little old man had
+seen it he would probably have boxed his ears for him. This "die
+happy" was silly. Death had always frightened him whenever he had come
+near to it.
+
+"Have you been to war?" Pinocchio asked the little old man, half
+ironically.
+
+"Can't you see?" and he pointed to a row of medals pinned on his coat.
+
+"And you would go back?"
+
+"Certainly, if they would take me as a volunteer."
+
+This reply brought a strange longing to Pinocchio, all the more that
+the tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock in the box inside of his body was
+making so much noise that it rang in his ears. And then the gay notes
+of the band, the joyous air of the soldiers, the cheers of the crowd,
+suddenly brought a strange idea into his head. The war, with its
+cannon, marches on one side, fighting on the other, horses dashing,
+flags waving in the wind, songs of victory, medals on the breast,
+prisoners tied together like sausages, war trophies, danced before his
+eyes in a fantastic dance. The war must be just the place for him, all
+the more so when he thought that it couldn't be easy to get to it if
+the little old man who had been there so often couldn't go now.
+
+"I, too, will go to the war with the soldiers," he said, in a low
+voice, and without wasting a moment he pushed his way between the
+troops, who, now that they were approaching the station, began to
+close up the ranks. He found himself by the side of a young blond
+soldier, who seemed more lonely and sad than the others.
+
+"Will you take me with you?" Pinocchio asked, pulling at his coat.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To the war."
+
+"You? Are you crazy?"
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+"And you ask me to take you with me?"
+
+"Whom, then, must I ask?"
+
+"There is the guard down there, that one with a blue scarf over his
+shoulder."
+
+When Pinocchio got an idea in his head he had to work it out at any
+cost. So he repeated his demand to the lieutenant of the guard, who,
+smiling under his mustache, pointed out the captain inspecting the
+troops. But the captain could decide nothing without the consent of
+the battalion commander, who, for his part, would have had to ask the
+approval of the colonel. He advised Pinocchio to hasten matters by
+going to the adjutant, who could present his request directly to the
+general.
+
+They were now in the station. The soldiers took their places in the
+huge cars, around which crowded their families, friends, and the
+cheering, curious throng. At the end of the train some first-class
+carriages were attached into which the orderlies carried the
+hand-baggage of their higher officers. In front of one compartment
+reserved for one of these was piled up a regular mountain of small
+objects--little packages, boxes, rugs, furs, which a cavalry soldier
+was trying to carry inside. The adjutant, a few feet away, was looking
+on, trembling with impatience and vexation.
+
+"Quick! Quick! You lazybones! Quick! Quick! Mollica. General
+Win-the-War will be here in a minute and his things are not yet
+inside. I'll put you under arrest for a fortnight."
+
+"I respectfully beg the adjutant to observe that I have only two hands
+for the service of my general and of my country."
+
+"And I beg you to observe that the train is about to start off."
+
+"If the adjutant would order some one to give me a hand ..."
+
+"There isn't any one to be had, confound it!"
+
+Just at that moment Pinocchio advanced resolutely toward the adjutant
+to put forward his request to be enlisted.
+
+"Mr. Adjutant ... I have come ... to ..."
+
+The adjutant didn't let Pinocchio say another word, but caught hold of
+him under the chin, squeezed him, shook him gently ... and said:
+
+"Good! I understand ... you want to do something for the army.... Good
+boy! You are the best kind of a volunteer. Fine! Help Private Mollica
+to carry in all this stuff and your country will be grateful to you.
+And you, Mollica, hurry up. I beg you to observe that now you have the
+four hands you requested for the job. We understand each other, heh?"
+
+Then he was off toward a group of soldiers who were chalking on the
+door of one of the railway carriages in large letters: "_Through
+Train--Venice--Trieste--Vienna_." A big crowd had gathered around,
+stopping the traffic.
+
+"Ho, boys, who told you to write _through train_? Next time ask
+permission from your superior officer.... There will be a little stop
+before we get there."
+
+"Doesn't matter, sir, as long as we _get_ there."
+
+"Well! You can tell when a train leaves, but not whether it will ever
+arrive."
+
+"Hurrah for Italy!"
+
+"Good boys! I like that. But rub out what you have written. You are
+first-class soldiers, you are. We understand each other, heh?" And off
+he went.
+
+With Pinocchio's aid Private Mollica performed miracles. In a few
+minutes the general's things were inside, beautifully arranged in the
+baggage-racks.
+
+"You are a prodigy, boy, I tell you. You have done me a great service
+and my adjutant will be so pleased that if you will promise to keep
+guard here a moment I will go to tell him so that he can thank you in
+the general's name."
+
+"Go along; I'll stay," Pinocchio replied, and took up a position in
+front of the door that was so soldierly you might have taken him for a
+distant relative of Napoleon the Great before St. Helena.
+
+But a minute had not gone by and Mollica had not got a hundred steps
+away when Pinocchio turned as pale as death and trembled so with
+fright that he almost fell off the step. He had caught sight a short
+way off of General Win-the-War surrounded by a crowd of officers; and
+with his marvelous vision had recognized in him Papa Geppetto's
+furious tenant, whose stained glass he had shattered a few hours
+before, all on account of saucy Coccorito.
+
+He was lost; there was no possible way of escape! Win-the-War was
+coming direct to his compartment and the adjutant was guiding him. The
+crowd in the way divided before him and the soldiers stood stiffly at
+attention. Even Mollica stood there straight as a ramrod.... Pinocchio
+gave a leap into the compartment, hoping to escape by the opposite
+door. But it was not possible to open it.... He heard the sound of
+the approaching steps, the ring of the spurs.... Pinocchio flung
+himself down on the floor of the compartment and hid himself, face
+downward, under one of the seats.
+
+The general, a colonel, and the adjutant got in. A band struck up the
+national air; thousands of voices cheered the King, Italy, and the
+Army. The soldiers responded with youthful courage.... You heard a
+continual medley of good-bys and good wishes, and the quick, sharp
+repetition of commands. A hundred voices were singing, "Farewell, my
+dear one, farewell"; a hundred others sang Garibaldi's Hymn.... There
+was a profound silence in the compartment. Perhaps the superior
+officers felt the great responsibility of the moment and were moved by
+it. Pinocchio didn't dare breathe for fear of betraying himself, but
+in his breast the tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock beat so loudly that
+he thought it must resound all along the wooden walls of the carriage.
+The notes of the national air seemed to be quicker ... the cries of
+the crowd louder ... the locomotive whistled shrilly a desperate
+good-by ... the train began to move....
+
+"Gentlemen," said the general to his two companions, "let Italy's fate
+now be fulfilled. To-morrow we shall cross the frontier, for the glory
+of our King and for the greatness of our country. Long live Italy!"
+
+There was so much emotion in the old soldier's voice that Pinocchio
+felt as if a rope were strangling his throat. When the train was under
+way, rumbling noisily along the rails, he burst out crying and
+discovered that he had a heart just as if he were a real boy!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_How Pinocchio Recognized the Advantages of His Wooden Body_
+
+
+"So, Colonel, you understand? This afternoon we shall be at ----
+(censor); we shall bivouac the troops; to-morrow morning at two we
+must be on the march. We shall cross the frontier at ---- (censor) and
+we shall descend toward ----. I expect rapid and united advance until
+we encounter serious opposition. Remind the soldiers of the respect
+due to property in the conquered lands and to the beaten foes taken
+prisoners.... I have been told by the commander-in-chief that it has
+been discovered that there is a host of spies who are working to
+injure us. I command you to be very severe with spies caught in the
+act, no matter what their age, race, or social standing. Tell your
+officers to keep absolutely secret all orders which they receive. If
+there is the slightest suspicion that an order relating to our advance
+has reached the ear of a person suspected even in the slightest
+degree, take him out, stand him with his face to the wall, and give
+him eight bullets in his back. You understand--without fear of
+consequences or that you may be mistaken. It would be better than to
+allow--let us suppose such a case--a whole regiment to be destroyed."
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+Pinocchio, who had been beginning to enjoy the adventure, the swaying
+of the train, which, as he lay on his face, tickled his stomach, and
+the conversation of the general, which greatly interested him, was so
+terrified at these words that his body felt like goose-flesh. For a
+moment he thought he would faint. His ears rang loudly and he burst
+into a sweat. Heigh-ho! The general was not a man to say such things
+as a joke: "If there is the slightest suspicion that an order relating
+to our advance has reached the ear of a person suspected even in the
+slightest degree, take him out, stand him with his face to the wall,
+and give him eight bullets in his back." It was clear. As clear as it
+could be! Instead of a _single_ order, Pinocchio had overheard a
+number ... they would certainly take him for a spy, and most certainly
+the eight bullets would not be lacking.
+
+"Eight!" he exclaimed to himself as soon as he had managed to grow a
+little calmer. "Eight! One would be enough for me, and even that would
+be too much! But I don't want to die with bullets in my back.... I am
+not a spy at all. Well ... how can I persuade that orang-outang that I
+am in this compartment and under this seat for no other purpose than
+to go to war against my country's enemies, and because the authorities
+certainly wouldn't let me go in a more decent way? And suppose he
+recognizes me as the one who smashed his stained-glass window that
+opened out on his terrace, instead of eight bullets, he will order me
+a couple of dozen.... What a pity! Poor me! Poor Papa Geppetto, what
+will he say about me? But, to sum it up, I am not a spy, and when any
+one wants to pretend to be what he is not he must find out the way to
+show them that he is not what they believe him to be.... The best way,
+I think, would be to slip off quietly. No one saw me come in here ...
+all I have to do is to get out without any one's seeing me. It can't
+be very difficult to do that; I'll just stay quietly until the train
+gets to its destination, then let these gentlemen step out, and a
+minute later I'll fade away."
+
+If you could have poked your head under the seat and seen Pinocchio's
+face at this moment you would have been made happy by his joyful
+smile. This little bit of reasoning had so quieted his mind that if
+they had pressed eight muskets against his back to shoot the famous
+eight bullets into him he would have begun to laugh as if they were
+doing it only to tickle him.
+
+He stretched himself out slowly, and, lulled by the swaying of the
+train, was soon overcome by such a tranquil slumber that he couldn't
+have slept better in his own little bed.
+
+"Poor Pinocchio!" I think I hear you say. "What is going to happen to
+him now?" Yes, that's the way. It is the usual rule in this world that
+when a person thinks he can enjoy a moment of blessed repose some
+misfortune is lying in wait for him. If Pinocchio, instead of letting
+himself be overcome with sleep, had kept his eyes and ears open while
+the train was slowing down and the locomotive ahead was puffing
+noisily he would have heard General Win-the-War let out a yell of
+pain. Of course, he should have kept it back, but in time of war we
+pardon certain things, particularly when a general about to make an
+attack suffers from the torture of rheumatic sciatica, an old trouble
+of his.
+
+"What's the matter, General?"
+
+"My leg. My pain has come back; it's worse than an Austrian bullet."
+
+"Perhaps you have taken a little cold."
+
+"Perhaps.... It doesn't seem warm here, for a fact, does it, Colonel?"
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+"We are in the mountains and still climbing, and the temperature is
+going down."
+
+"Gracious me! so it is. They ought ... Major, do me the favor at the
+next stop to ask if it is possible to heat the compartment. If the
+rest of you don't like the heat you can just go into the next
+compartment."
+
+"The idea!"
+
+At the next stop, which was not long in coming, the colonel asked
+permission of his superior officer to go off for an inspection of his
+men, and the major went off to see about heat for his commanding
+officer. It was not a hard matter to obtain what he wanted. The
+general was traveling in an up-to-date carriage, one of those that
+have under the seats special steam coils which can be connected with
+the exhaust pipes of the locomotive's boiler, and, by a simple
+adjustment, begin to send out heat immediately.
+
+The signal for departure had already been given when the major
+returned joyfully to the compartment.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The connection is made and we have heat on."
+
+"Or rather we shall have it, because just now ..."
+
+"Excuse me, General, all we have to do is to push that handle where
+the sign says 'cold' and 'hot' and ..."
+
+The general, who was following the maneuver attentively, uttered an
+"Oh!" of relief as if the compartment were suddenly transformed into
+a hothouse, and stretched his legs out comfortably, resting his feet
+on the opposite seat.
+
+I can't tell you where Pinocchio's thoughts were at this moment. But I
+can assure you that he was dreaming and that they must have been
+pleasant dreams, because there was a beautiful smile on his face. But
+suddenly the expression changed to one strange and painful. Perhaps in
+his dreams, while he was seated at a table that was spread with the
+most delicious dainties, he felt himself slipping down, down, and
+suddenly found himself on a hot gridiron with St. Lawrence in person.
+It is certain that when he opened his eyes it was impossible to
+breathe the air beneath the seat, and where his back touched it, it
+was hot enough to bake a loaf of bread. He started to jump out, but
+caught sight, right in front of his nose, of the little wheels in the
+adjutant's spurs. The sight of these brought him back to his real
+situation.
+
+"But what is the matter?" he said to himself. "Is the axle of the
+wheel on fire? And can I keep from burning? But if they notice it,
+too? If no one moves that means that there is no danger ... but,
+Heavens! it burns! Ouch! I am covered with sweat, but I have got to
+stand it.... If I get out there will be the eight bullets in my back.
+Poor me! How much better it would be if I were still nothing but a
+wooden puppet!"
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+Well, I can't help him. It's too much for me. It would indeed have
+been convenient at that moment to be made of wood, for he was in a
+situation such as no one would wish for any creature of flesh and
+blood--for me or you, for instance. He had either to stand being
+steamed on the boiling pipe of the heating apparatus or to give
+himself up into the hands of the general, who wouldn't delay long the
+threatened shooting.
+
+Pinocchio was a hero, also a regular martyr, because he stood the
+torture more than half an hour, turning himself from side to side,
+moving restlessly, and drawing up his body in one way and another
+like the aforesaid St. Lawrence of blessed memory, the only difference
+being that the saint expected to be well cooked on one side and then
+to turn over and be cooked on the other; while Pinocchio, when he
+discovered that a certain part of him was about to be cooked in
+earnest, let out a loud scream and followed it by calls for "Help!
+help!"
+
+General Win-the-War and the adjutant jumped to their feet like
+jacks-in-the-box, threw themselves down on the ground, and, without
+paying any attention to the blow on the heads they gave each other,
+ran their arms under the seat, and with outstretched hands seized hold
+of Pinocchio and dragged him out. They nearly tore him in two like a
+tender chicken, one pulling him on one side and one on the other.
+
+"You wretch!"
+
+"You scoundrel!"
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Speak, you miserable creature!"
+
+"General, he is a spy."
+
+"We must question him in German ... he must be an Austrian."
+
+"_Wer sind Sie?_"
+
+No answer.
+
+"What language do you speak, you little beast?"
+
+Poor Pinocchio couldn't even draw a long breath. The general clutched
+him by the collar with such a military firmness that he turned the
+color of a ripe cherry. A little more and he would have been strangled
+to death.
+
+The adjutant saved him by respectfully bidding the general remember
+that in questioning a prisoner it is necessary to allow him to breathe
+if you wish an answer.
+
+"Mr. General ... forgive me. I am not a spy. It would be a real crime
+if you had me shot ... just as soon as we arrive at ... Give me a gun
+and I will go to war with the troops."
+
+"Oh, you wretch! So you listened to all we said?"
+
+"How could I help it? I was under here when the train started. It was
+I who helped Private Mollica to put all your stuff inside."
+
+"Even this leather case?"
+
+"Certainly I, I myself."
+
+"Even the despatch-case with the plans! Major, give me your revolver
+so that I can shoot him like a dog."
+
+"But why do you want to shoot me, Mr. General? I haven't done
+anything.... I wanted to go to the war to hear the cannon, but I never
+spied on any one, not even when I went to school.... Can you really
+take me for a Boche? No, for gracious' sake, no.... Look at my
+features.... No, no, no, for Heaven's sake! Keep your weapon quiet....
+Don't you know who I am?... I am Pinocchio, Papa Geppetto's Pinocchio
+... who only this morning broke your stained-glass window...."
+
+At that point the general uttered such a roar that Pinocchio felt his
+breath leave him. But he saw the officer hand back the pistol to the
+major and take up from the seat a big leather bag; then he didn't see
+the bag again, but he felt it several times and with great force
+exactly on the part of his body which had suffered the most from the
+heat of the steam coil.... But Pinocchio was saved by his sincerity.
+General Win-the-War could certainly not have bothered to beat a real
+spy, but I can tell you that at that moment Pinocchio would have
+preferred to be still a wooden puppet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_How Pinocchio Sent a Solemn Protest to Francis Joseph to Rectify an
+Official Bulletin_
+
+
+May had come with her blossoms, but up there a sharp wind was blowing
+so that it seemed still February. Pinocchio, half naked as he was,
+shivered like a leaf, and every now and then let out a sneeze which
+sounded like a bursting shell. At every sneeze Mollica gave him a
+kick, Corporal Fanfara a box on the ear, and Drummer Stecca a pinch.
+The only one who didn't abuse him was Bersaglierino, the blond young
+soldier, more melancholy than his companions, whom he had first
+accosted in the station when they were setting out. I have told you
+that Pinocchio trembled with cold, and I will tell you that it was
+almost a good thing for him to do so; otherwise they would have seen
+him tremble with fear. If this had happened, his teasing companions
+would have driven him to despair. Pinocchio was to be pitied. He was
+at the front, the frontier several miles behind them, and any minute
+might bring Austrian bullets whistling through the air. The general
+had spared the youngster from being shot in the back, but he had given
+orders to put him in the very front line during the advance and to
+keep him well guarded. In one case the guns of the enemy would do
+justice to the suspected spy; in the other, Pinocchio would clear
+himself by his conduct and at the same time would lose his desire for
+a close view of the enemy.
+
+Private Mollica was furious with him.
+
+"Che-chew! che-chew! che-chew!"
+
+"Plague take you!" Another kick. "Keep still, you little beast! If you
+let the enemy spot us I'll stick this bayonet in your backbone."
+
+"I can't stand it any longer. I am frozen--che-chew!"
+
+"Stop it!" Another box on the ear. "You are all right. You wanted to
+be a volunteer; now you see how much fun it is."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you.... You were the cause of the fine talking-to my general
+gave me, and you made me lose my place as an orderly where I had a
+chance to make extra soldi. If you hadn't gone and told him that you
+had helped me to carry his things and if you hadn't slipped under the
+seat of that same officer to listen to what he said, I shouldn't have
+been punished by being sent to the front."
+
+"Are you afraid, then, Mollica?"
+
+"I afraid? But don't you know that if I catch sight of an Austrian
+I'll eat him?"
+
+"Like the food you took from the general," that rascal of a Pinocchio
+dared to remark.
+
+There was a chorus of laughs that stopped as if by magic at the sound
+of a certain roar in the distance and of something whistling through
+the air and very near.
+
+"There they are!"
+
+"We're in it."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+Who paid any attention now to Pinocchio? All of them had drawn close
+to one another and had rushed to the edge of the road, their guns
+pointed, to examine the distant landscape. The mountain was very
+steep there and covered with thick vegetation. Down at the bottom,
+toward the plain, there seemed to be an unexpected rise ... after the
+steep descent a green stretch through which a river ran like a silver
+ribbon. Still farther, was a chain of low mountains, almost like a
+cloud on the edge of the peaceful horizon.
+
+There was the roar of some more shots and the whistling of the shells,
+and a branch of a tree was splintered and fell.
+
+Pinocchio, alone in the middle of the road, felt a creeping up and
+down his spine and experienced a trembling in his legs that shook like
+a palsied man's. The second time he heard a shell whistle he felt that
+he must find a hole in which to hide himself. He looked about him and
+caught sight near by of an enormous larch-tree which pointed directly
+toward the heavens. I don't know how to explain it, but the sight of
+it took away from Pinocchio the desire to hide himself under the
+ground and made him wish to climb toward the stars. He gave a spring
+and shinned up the big trunk in a flash. I bet you a plugged soldo
+against a lira that you would have done the same....
+
+  [Illustration: "I SEE THE SUET-EATERS"]
+
+"I see them! I see them!"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Whom do you see?"
+
+"Where are they? Where are you that we can't see you?"
+
+"I am up here."
+
+"Bravo! And whom do you see?" Bersaglierino asked.
+
+"I see the suet-eaters."
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"Down there where there is a kind of slope there is a town hidden
+among the trees ... up here you can see a roof and the spire of a
+bell-tower ... you can see people on the roof ... you can see
+something glisten ... now they are firing."
+
+This time there were several reports, but they seemed to be aiming in
+another direction, because there was not the usual whistle in the air.
+
+"Whom are they 'strafing'?" Corporal Fanfara asked himself.
+
+"I'll 'strafe' that scoundrel Pinocchio. If you don't come down alive
+I will bring you down dead with a bullet in the seat of your
+trousers."
+
+"But listen! Look down there and see whom they're giving it to," cried
+the enraged Bersaglierino, pointing out a marching column which was
+hurrying below them.
+
+"Our infantry!"
+
+"Yes, indeed. They will beat us to it. It's a shame."
+
+"Our company ought to start off at a double-quick."
+
+"It must be a half-mile away."
+
+"But the bersaglieri must get there first ... even if there are only
+the four of us."
+
+"Sure thing."
+
+"Do you hear?"
+
+"Forward, Savoy!"
+
+And, heads lowered and bayonets fixed, they rushed down the slope.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Ho! boys! Ho! Mol-li-ca! Cor-po-ral!... Oh! They are going off
+without me! What a mean thing to do! They leave me here at the top of
+this tree and run off.... But if they think they can play me such a
+trick they are mistaken.... I am hungry as a wolf, and if I don't get
+them to feed me, whom can I join? Run, run.... We'll see who gets
+there first!"
+
+He climbed down the tree, grumbling as he went, tightened the belt of
+his trousers, drank in several deep breaths of air, and then tore off
+like an express train behind time.
+
+I will tell you at once, not to keep you in suspense, that the
+bersaglieri got there the first, the infantry second, and Pinocchio
+... a good third. I call it a "good third" merely as a way of
+expressing it, because when he arrived at the village our soldiers had
+already passed through it and had advanced some distance beyond,
+following the Austrians, who had taken to their heels and who were
+suffering a sharp fire at short range.
+
+The village was so small that it didn't even deserve the name of one.
+There were ten houses in all besides the church with the bell-tower,
+and a long shed over which waved the white flag with the red cross.
+There was a deathlike silence everywhere. On the little square before
+the church some bodies of Austrian soldiers were lying; among them was
+that of an officer so ugly that he seemed to have died of fright, but
+there was a red spot on his back. Pinocchio was terrified at the sight
+of him, but he had such a longing for his sword, his automatic pistol,
+his handsome belt, his light-blue cape, and his cap that he persuaded
+himself it was perfectly silly to be afraid of a dead Austrian,
+particularly when they weren't afraid of live ones. Without too much
+reflection, he buckled on the dead man's belt, armed himself with the
+pistol, wrapped himself in the blue cape, and pressed the cap down on
+his head. He was good to look at, I can assure you.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+The Hapsburg army had never had an officer who could be compared with
+this puppet who had now become a real boy. Pinocchio was prancing up
+and down in his new disguise, his sword clanking against the pavement,
+just like any little lieutenant, when he heard a horrible roar high up
+overhead, then, a moment later, an explosion which shook the ground!
+When he lifted up his head to see what had happened he thought he
+caught sight of some one walking about on the church's bell-tower. He
+saw a rag tied to a pole waving and, as if in reply to a signal,
+brumm! another shot that fell closer. Pinocchio, who was suspicious,
+went into the vestry and, pistol in hand, rushed up the steep little
+wooden stairs. He got to the top without even making the old
+worm-eaten stairs squeak. In the space where the bells hung a man in
+civilian's clothes had his back turned toward him. He was looking off
+from the balcony, and kept on waving the red cloth. You could see the
+vast expanse of the plain, and among the green a strange, intermittent
+flash ... then a puff ... then you heard a roar, followed by a crash,
+like a moving train rapidly approaching, then a tremendous explosion.
+The shells never fell as far as the town, but burst all around it,
+sending up columns of earth and smoke. And off there Pinocchio could
+see the bersaglieri, the soldiers of his country. The traitor with his
+signals was directing fire on the Italian troops.
+
+Tell me truly, what would you have done if you had been in Pinocchio's
+place? Would you have fired at the traitor? Yes or no. Well, Pinocchio
+did the same--cocked his pistol, shut his eyes, pulled the trigger,
+and pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum, seven shots went off. He had expected
+only one, and was so frightened that he pitched his weapon away and
+took to his heels, down the steps, without thought of the wretch, who,
+for his part, did no more signaling, I assure you!
+
+When he had got down to the square Pinocchio rushed across it, and was
+about to run in the direction where he had seen his bersaglieri
+fighting, when, passing by the shed where the Red Cross flag waved, he
+thought he heard the sound of several voices in a lively discussion.
+He stopped suddenly and very, very quietly approached a big window
+closed merely by a wire netting. Inside he saw on one side of the
+large room two rows of beds, in the middle a group of rough-looking
+soldiers, with waxed mustaches, completely armed, who were busy
+plotting together. Just at that moment they separated to go to bed.
+They took off their weapons, hid them under the sheets, and slipped
+themselves into bed, drawing the covers up to their noses.
+
+  [Illustration: HE SAW A RAG TIED TO A POLE WAVING]
+
+"_Wunderschön!_" ("Fine.")
+
+"When Italian pigs come we make a colossal festival," grunted a Croat
+and laughed boisterously. "We sick get well, and Italians all croak."
+
+"I'll croak you," muttered Pinocchio, who in a twinkle had understood
+the deviltry the wretches were planning. He made himself as small as
+he could, so that the cape dragged on the ground like a petticoat,
+slunk along the walls of the shed, then rushed off at full speed
+toward the fields. He was just passing the last house of the village
+when he found himself unexpectedly surrounded by a score of Austrian
+soldiers in a half-tipsy condition, so that they took him for their
+superior officer. He thought himself lost.
+
+"Lieutenant, don't go farther. 'Talians still near and make croak all
+Croats."
+
+"Croat? I a Croat!"
+
+"'Talians make croak Slovaks, too."
+
+"Oh! Mamma!"
+
+"_Ja, ja!_"
+
+"_Ja, ja!_"
+
+Pinocchio had a flash of intuition; he hid his hand under his cape,
+unsheathed the sword, and, assuming so martial a manner that then and
+there he could have been taken for a handsome brother of William, he
+yelled and swore some doggerel which the dolts might think was
+Hungarian, Dalmatian, or Rumanian, spun 'round and continued on his
+way to the Italian position. The Austrians followed him, bayonets
+fixed, convinced that the spirit of Tegetoff had come to life and was
+leading them to victory. But instead, when they had gone a hundred
+yards they were showered with bullets and had to fling themselves on
+the ground in order to escape immediate extermination. Pinocchio saw
+that he was being shot at more than the others, and didn't know why.
+All around him the torn-up earth was strewn with plumes.
+
+"I should like to know why they are after me especially, who am not
+even firing, while they are sparing these monkeys who have followed me
+and are shooting like mad. Oh! Perhaps it is on account of the uniform
+of that miserable officer. If that is the case, my dear ones, enough
+of your sport. 'Oho! I am an Italian. Stop firing, for Heaven's sake,
+so that I can tell you something important. Oho! Enough, I say!'"
+
+And standing up straight, he hurled the cape and the cap away from
+him, and with no thought of danger, made for the spot from which came
+the Italian fire.
+
+Then came the end of the scene. The Croats behind him jumped to their
+feet like so many jacks-in-the-box, threw their arms about and waved
+their hands in the air.... From a hedge not far off, a company of
+bersaglieri came running up and surrounded them, yelling, "Surrender!"
+
+"If one of them moves, stick him like a toad," commanded a lieutenant.
+
+"Don't worry, sir, I'll spit him for your roasting."
+
+"Secure their officer."
+
+"Heh, boys! don't joke ... lower your bayonets. I'm no Austrian
+officer. I am Pinocchio. Mollica, don't you recognize me?"
+
+"You beastly little creature, what game are you playing? But I'll run
+you through, all the same."
+
+"What's up now?"
+
+"Lieutenant, Mollica wants to make believe that I am an Austrian
+lieutenant, because I was the cause of his losing his place as
+orderly with General Win-the-War, but I am Pinocchio. Do you know me?
+I am glad. Order these twenty apes, which I have brought all the way
+here, to be bound, and then if you give me thirty men I will guarantee
+to catch some others that I have put to bed in the big barracks under
+the protection of the Red Cross, who pretended they were ill, but who
+had hidden their guns under the covers to 'croak Italian hogs.'"
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"I'll tell you now ... then I'll show you up on the tower what a
+pretty thing I found--a traitor who was making signals to some one far
+off, and then, boom! there came one of those shells that burst. I
+meant to let him have one little bullet, but the pistol fired so many
+at him that I threw everything away...."
+
+"But come on! Come on! Show me the way!"
+
+"Right away, but on one condition--that when I have guided you, you
+will give me something to eat, because I am so hungry that I could eat
+that miserable Mollica."
+
+  [Illustration: "YOU BEASTLY LITTLE CREATURE, WHAT GAME ARE YOU
+PLAYING?"]
+
+"Come on, boy, to the village. Double quick!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Who would have imagined that his regiment had been fighting
+continuously for ten hours, leaving some dead on the field and sending
+not a few wounded to the ambulance? There on the square of the village
+won by Italy, beneath the shadow of the red, white, and green flag
+that waved from the summit of the little tower, the brave boys gave
+vent to unrestrained joy. It was time for rations. In the camp
+kitchens big pots were steaming, but the soldiers did not crowd around
+them as usual to fill their canteens. The bersaglieri's attention was
+held by a sight which put them in good humor, and good humor in war is
+a rare thing. Pinocchio was eating! He had swallowed three platefuls
+of soup in five minutes, and as he continued to grunt that he was
+hungry, they had given him a canteen full to the top and slipped into
+it a piece of meat that would have been sufficient to satisfy the
+hunger of four city employees.
+
+"Look out for bones!"
+
+"Are you going to eat them all?"
+
+"If he stays with us he'll break the Government."
+
+"Look out, boys, he'll end by bursting."
+
+"Don't you split open with all the Austrians you have eaten, for pork
+is more indigestible than asses' meat."
+
+"Heh! don't find fault with the food."
+
+"And what kind of meat do you call this?"
+
+"The best beef."
+
+"Lie! I am familiar with animals ... you give beef to the officers;
+donkey-meat to the soldiers."
+
+"Look out, you Pinocchio, you'll get into trouble with that tongue of
+yours."
+
+"Then let me eat in peace. You are all staring at me as if I were a
+Zulu chewing a hen with her feathers on. My tongue can't be dainty
+both talking and eating."
+
+"Let's murder him."
+
+And then there was a loud burst of laughter from all. Pinocchio was
+shoveling food into his mouth with both his hands, so that his face
+was red as a cock's comb and he could scarcely breathe.
+
+They were already as fond of him as if he were their son. His
+achievements had won for him a certain respect even from the officers
+whom he amused with his monkeyshines. It had been decided to adopt
+Pinocchio as the "son of the regiment" and to keep him at the front as
+a mascot. He was to live with the troops and to wear the uniform of a
+Boy Scout. The soldiers with common accord had put off his costume to
+an opportune moment. Do you want to know the reason? The brave boys
+were afraid to stick Pinocchio into puttees with so many spiral bands
+because his little thin legs would have frightened people. For the
+time being they had him put on a pair of short trousers which dragged
+behind him on the ground, a little cape like a bersagliere's, and a
+fez with a light-blue tassel so long that it touched his heels. This
+tassel was Pinocchio's delight, who, in order to look at it, always
+walked along with his head over his shoulder, and so would keep
+bumping into first one thing and then another. One day the mischievous
+Mollica made him run into one of the quarter-master-corps mules, and
+Pinocchio saluted and asked its pardon. But when he ran into officers,
+sergeants, corporals, and soldiers, instead of saluting he swore at
+them all.
+
+It is three days later. General Win-the-War's troops have not
+advanced. Our bersaglieri are still in camp near ----. It is a
+sultry, thundering afternoon. Many of the soldiers are sleeping. The
+Bersaglierino is playing cards with Mollica. Corporal Fanfara is
+shaving. Stecca is practising on his cornet, trying a variation on a
+well-known tune. Pinocchio, in the back of the tent, is snoring so
+loudly that Mollica every now and then hurls a handful of earth at his
+nose to make him lower his note.
+
+Suddenly the boredom is broken, every one jumps up and runs out to a
+certain point and crowds around an automobile that has just arrived.
+Pinocchio wakes up with a start, finds his mouth full of grit, his
+nose dirty, and hears all the noise about him--has a terrible fright,
+lets out a yell, and rushes out of the tent. But he is scarcely
+outside before he feels himself caught up by his legs and whirled
+around on the ground. He gets up again and is face to face with
+Bersaglierino, who has not left his post and who laughs loudly at
+Pinocchio's plight.
+
+"What has happened?"
+
+"The mail has come."
+
+"And you're making all this racket for that? I thought it was the
+Austrians."
+
+"You little coward, you!"
+
+"That's enough, Bersaglierino, if you say that to me again I'll give
+you such a kick that will change your shape. But why don't you, too,
+go to see if you have any letters?"
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"Who do you think would write me? I am as alone in the world as a dog,
+just like you, it seems."
+
+"Yes, that's so," replied Pinocchio, swallowing hard, because he had
+suddenly felt his throat tighten at the thought of Papa Geppetto, from
+whom he had had no news for many a long day.
+
+"It is a red-letter day for the others. Mollica will have a letter
+from his father, Fanfara news from his two babies, Stecca kisses from
+his wife.... I might be killed to-morrow by a bullet in the stomach
+and they would let me rot in a ditch and that would be the end."
+
+Mollica came back, his arms full of newspapers. His father, a
+news-dealer in Naples, sent him a copy of every unsold publication,
+knowing that anything may come in useful in war-times, even old news.
+
+"Heh! Bersaglierino! You want us to play the postman and yet you don't
+take any trouble to get your scented letter."
+
+"You are joking?"
+
+"No, it's no joke. Here is one really for you, and I congratulate you
+because if you are engaged she must be at least a countess."
+
+The Bersaglierino took the letter his comrade held out to him and read
+the address over several times. There was no doubt; it was his name
+that was written on the scented envelope the color of a blush rose. He
+turned pale and stood for a moment undecided, then he tore it open and
+read:
+
+     DEAR BERSAGLIERINO,--I saw how sad and alone you were at the
+     moment of your departure, so I felt it was my duty as a
+     patriotic Italian girl to write to you. Go and fight for our
+     country; do your duty bravely, and remember that in thought
+     I follow and will follow you every minute. If you return
+     valorously I will meet you and tell you how happy I am; if
+     you fall wounded I will go to your hospital bed to soothe
+     your suffering; if you die for your country my flowers shall
+     lie on your grave and your name will always be written in my
+     heart. Long live Italy!
+
+     Your war-godmother,
+
+     FATINA.
+
+"Long live Italy!" Bersaglierino shouted like mad. He caught up his
+hat with its cock plumes and tossed it in the air with all his force,
+seized Pinocchio who was standing by him, and lifted him up in both
+his arms, pulled his cap off his head, and then twirled it round on
+his pate, scratching the poor boy's nose.
+
+"What's got into you? Are you crazy?"
+
+"Am I crazy? I am happy! I am not alone any more, do you understand? I
+am no longer an unlucky fellow like you with no one belonging to him.
+But I am fonder of you than ever. Give me a kiss ..." and he pressed
+such a hearty kiss on his nose that his comrades laughed. But
+Pinocchio longed to cry. The heart in his body beat a violent
+tick-tock, tick-tock.
+
+"Have you read what Franz Joe's newspapers say?--'Italian soldiers are
+brigands who do not respect civilians or the wounded in the
+hospitals.' That means you, dear Pinocchio, because you shot the
+traitor on the tower. You can be sure that if the suet-eaters win they
+will make you pay for the crime."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, you! You don't intend to say that I killed him, do you?
+And you, thank God, are not an enlisted Italian soldier, therefore
+..."
+
+"I understand."
+
+The camp was quiet once again; indeed, I might say that tender
+memories had softened its youthful exuberance. The voices from home
+were keeping the soldiers silent. It was as if every letter their eyes
+fell on was speaking to them quietly and they were blessed in
+listening, their faces shining with happiness. Corporal Fanfara held a
+sheet of paper on which there was nothing but some strange scrawls. He
+gazed at it with delight, and while two big tears ran down his cheeks
+he murmured in his Venetian dialect, "My darling little rascals!"
+These scrawls of theirs were more welcome to him than the letter from
+his wife which told of privations, anxiety, and troubles. Private
+Mollica was acting like a detective, searching through the newspaper
+pages for his father's dirty finger-marks; and as there was little
+trouble in finding them he kept repeating every moment, "This was made
+by my dear old man." Then he kissed the marks so often that his whole
+mouth was black with printer's ink.
+
+Shortly after every one was writing, some bent over their
+writing-tablets, some on the back of a good-natured comrade, some
+stretched out on the ground, some on the edge of a bench, on the
+staves of a barrel, on a tree-trunk, with pencils, fountain-pens, on
+post-cards, envelopes, letter-paper spilled out miraculously from
+portfolios, bags, and canteens. Every one was writing. The
+Bersaglierino seemed to be composing a poem. He gesticulated, whacked
+himself on the ear, beat time with his pen that squirted ink in every
+direction, and every now and then declaimed under his breath certain
+phrases that were so moving that they made even him weep.
+
+Pinocchio was as silent and gloomy as the hood of a dirty kitchen
+stove. Squatting at the entrance to the tent, he kept glancing at his
+companions, and every now and then he would scratch his head so
+vigorously that he might have been currycombing a donkey. When
+Pinocchio scratched his head in that way ... Well, now you know that
+matters were serious, but I tell you they were so serious that he had
+the courage to interrupt the Bersaglierino in his literary studies.
+
+"Excuse me, but will you do me a favor?"
+
+"What do you want? Keep quiet ... leave me alone ... you make me lose
+my thread of thought ..."
+
+"So you write with thread, do you? Are you aware that they don't use
+this any more?"
+
+"Stop your nonsense. Leave me alone, puppet."
+
+"Do me a favor and then ..."
+
+"What is it? Spit it out!"
+
+"Lend me a pencil and a piece of paper."
+
+"You want to write, too?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you, too, have some one in the world who interests you?"
+
+"Yes ... perhaps."
+
+"A godmother like mine?"
+
+"Hum! No indeed."
+
+"You are serious about wanting to write?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Here's paper and pencil, then. Do you know how to write?"
+
+"Once I knew how."
+
+"All right. Then let me see it."
+
+"Gladly."
+
+Pinocchio rested his elbows on his knees, chin on his clasped hands,
+and, biting his pencil, lost himself in profound meditation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Excuse me, Bersaglierino."
+
+"Ho! Finished already?"
+
+"No ... that is ... yes, I have finished beginning, but ... I don't
+know what you put before the beginning."
+
+"Write, 'Dear So-and-so,' or 'My darling, etc., etc.'"
+
+"But you see I can't put either 'dear' or 'my darling.'"
+
+"So you are writing to a creditor?"
+
+"Something like that."
+
+"Heavens! Put his first name, his last name, swear at him, and that's
+enough."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Excuse me, Bersaglierino..."
+
+"Oh, are you still there?"
+
+"Yes.... I haven't been able to start the beginning because ..."
+
+"Do you or do you not know how to write?"
+
+"Like a lawyer."
+
+"Then?"
+
+"I don't know what his last name is."
+
+"Whose?"
+
+"Franz Joe's."
+
+"Writing to him? You want to write to him? To that miserable
+Hapsburg?"
+
+The news spread like lightning through the camp. The soldiers passed
+it from mouth to mouth, laughing like mad: Pinocchio was writing to
+Emperor Franz Joseph! This was interesting. They must know what the
+letter said. It would certainly be something to amuse them. So walking
+quietly, as if they were all eager to take him in the very act, they
+approached the tent where Pinocchio was composing his missive, not
+without difficulty. He had not been writing for several minutes and
+the words seemed so long to put down on paper. He had to keep thinking
+of the spelling, and the verbs bothered him terribly. When he raised
+his head to draw a breath of relief before re-reading what he had
+managed to write, he found himself surrounded by all the regiment.
+
+"Oh, you are well brought up, aren't you? Who taught you to stick your
+noses into other people's business?"
+
+"To whom have you written?"
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"To the one I wanted to."
+
+"Let's see the scribbling."
+
+"Look in your mirror and you will see worse lines on your own face."
+
+"We want to read the letter."
+
+"But if you are a pack of illiterates ..."
+
+"Listen, either you will let me see it or I will take you by one ear
+and the letter with the other hand, and I'll carry you both off to the
+censor, who will haul you before a court martial that will condemn you
+to be shot in the back."
+
+"Oh, do you really want to see it, Mollica?"
+
+"You heard what I said."
+
+"On one condition."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"That you will take charge of it and see that it gets to its address."
+
+"All right. Hand it here, you puppy. Listen to what he writes:
+
+     "MR. FRANZ HAPSBURG,
+
+     In his house in Austria,
+
+     "You wrote in the papers that the Italian soldiers are
+     rascals because they kill civilians and wounded Ostrians. I
+     want you to know that you are mistaken, because as you know
+     the traitor was killed by a pistol that shot off Ostrian
+     bullets by itself while it was in my hands who am not in the
+     army. That's how our soldiers found the traitor already
+     dead, the traitor who made signals from the church tower, so
+     that the shells fell on the ruins. As for the wounded in the
+     horspital I can asshure you that they were better off than
+     me and you, and that they had guns between their leggs under
+     the sheets. He who tells lies goes to hell and you will
+     certainly go there, but just now I'd like to send you there
+     myself who don't give a hang for you.
+
+     "PINOCCHIO."
+
+I can't describe to you what took place after the letter had been
+read.
+
+They gave the poor youngster such a feast that they had to put him to
+bed in a hammock. Before Private Mollica went to sleep he kept
+repeating: "I have promised to take your letter to Franz Joseph....
+You see if I don't send it through all the ranks till it reaches his
+own hands. On Mollica's honor!... I have promised to take your letter
+to Franz Joseph!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_How Pinocchio Learned That War Changes Everything--Even the Meaning
+of Words_
+
+
+The bersaglieri had passed the Isonzo and were intrenched at ----
+(censor). You certainly know now what the Isonzo is, because war
+teaches geography better than do teachers in the schools; so I don't
+intend to explain it to you. Pinocchio had followed his friends, and I
+assure you no one regretted his coming. When there were orders to
+carry to the rear or purchases to be made, it was Pinocchio who
+attended to them. Slender as a lizard and quick as a squirrel, he was
+out of the trenches without being seen and slipped along the furrows
+and ditches and the bushes with marvelous dexterity. He had been
+absolutely forbidden to approach the loopholes, and when they caught
+him about to disobey he got such boxes on the ears that he had to
+rub them for half an hour afterward. Mollica, and the Bersaglierino
+in particular, kept their eyes on him, so that they punished him
+often.
+
+  [Illustration: ONE DAY HE MANAGED TO CAPTURE A PIG AND TO DRAG IT
+ALONG BEHIND HIM]
+
+"I'd like to know why it is you two can stand with your noses against
+the hole and I mayn't."
+
+"Because of the _mosquitoes_."
+
+"Who cares for them? I haven't the slightest fear of mosquitoes."
+
+But when he saw them carry off a poor soldier hit in the middle of the
+forehead and understood that the "mosquitoes" were Austrian bullets,
+he gained a little wisdom. While the soldiers were suffering from the
+trench life which restrained their ardent natures, keeping them still
+and watchful, the rogue of a Pinocchio amused himself with all kinds
+of jokes. Dirty as he could be, he was always grubbing with his nails
+in the ground to deepen the trench, to make some new breastwork, to
+build up an escarp. If they sent him out to find logs of wood to
+repair the roofs of the dugouts he would come back laden with all
+sorts of things. Hens and eggs were his favorite booty. One day he
+managed to capture a pig and to drag it along behind him. But when
+they got near the trenches the cussed animal began to squeal so
+horribly that the Austrians opened up a terrific fire on him. For fear
+of the "mosquitoes" Pinocchio had to let him go, and the pig ran to
+take refuge among his brothers, the enemy.
+
+That evening it rained cats and dogs. The trench was one slimy pool.
+The rain dripped everywhere, penetrating, baring the parapets which
+collapsed, squirting mud and gluing the feet of the soldiers, who, wet
+to the bone, had to scurry through the wire to carry ammunition to
+safety and to repair the damage done to the trench. Pinocchio,
+barelegged, ran back and forth, bemired up to his hair, to give a
+helping hand to his friends.
+
+"What fun! We seem to be turning into crabs."
+
+"You are a beastly little puppy!"
+
+"Poor Mollica! You really make me sorry for you."
+
+"I make you sorry for me?"
+
+"Certainly. I shouldn't want to be you in all this downpour."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because this rain will melt your sugary nature."
+
+Mollica, to convince him of the contrary, started to administer one of
+his usual boxes on the ear, but he slipped and fell, face down, into
+the mud.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"Are you comfortable, Private Mollica? Tell me were you ever in a
+softer bed than now?... You look to me like a roll dipped in
+chocolate.... Bersaglierino, come and see how ugly he is! All chalky
+up into his hair.... I never saw any one look such an idiot!"
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"I wish they would murder you, you beastly little puppy!"
+
+After struggling about in the mud he managed to get to his feet again
+and had almost caught him, but in one spring Pinocchio was far away.
+The telephone dugout was a little deeper than the trench and the
+water was rapidly filling it up. It was already up to the operator's
+knees. A crowd of soldiers were working hard to stop the flood.
+
+"What are you doing, stupids? Do you think you can bail out this
+puddle with a cap? You are green. We ought to have big Bertha...."
+
+He didn't get in another word. They took hold of him by his arms and
+legs and soused him into the dirty water and held him under till he
+had drunk a cupful. The telephone operator would have liked to see him
+dead, then and there.
+
+"Hold him under till he is as swollen as a toad. He was calling down
+misfortune on us, wishing that a shell would fall on us. As if this
+rain weren't enough (che-chew, che-chew!); we are chilled to the
+marrow (che-chew!) and are likely to die bravely of cold ...
+(che-chew!)."
+
+"Enough! Let me go! Help! Bersaglierino! Mollica-a-a!"
+
+"What are you doing to him? Let him go. Shame on you!" yelled
+Bersaglierino, running up.
+
+"But don't you know that he was wishing a shell would hit us, the
+little wretch?"
+
+"Just as if we hadn't enough troubles now."
+
+"Of course you have enough, and one of your troubles is that you are
+regular beasts," cried Pinocchio as soon as he could get his breath.
+"I said I wished for Bertha, the cook in Papa Geppetto's house, to
+sweep away the water in here, but now I wish I had a broom in my hand
+to break its handle against your ribs."
+
+"But don't you know that a 'Big Bertha' is a Boche gun that would have
+blown us into a thousand pieces?"
+
+"So, little devil, do you understand? And now that you have learned
+your lesson, be off with you."
+
+There was nothing else for poor Pinocchio to do but to spit out the
+mud still in his mouth and turn on his heel.
+
+"Bersaglierino, I would have believed anything but that words change
+their meaning in this way. With these idiots you have to pay attention
+to what you say. They made me swallow so much ditch-water that it will
+be a miracle if I don't have little fish swimming around in my
+stomach."
+
+It stopped raining, but as if the Austrians didn't want to give the
+bersaglieri time to repair the damages caused by the bad weather, they
+began a furious bombardment of the trench. The "mosquitoes" kept up a
+terrible singing. Huge projectiles churned up the ground all around,
+digging out deep holes, raising whirls of earth, throwing off shreds
+of stone and steel in every direction. One shell had fallen near the
+telephone and had done great damage. The soldiers couldn't venture any
+distance from the dugout to aim at the enemy who was firing at them
+with such accuracy. Mud prevented their movements. They couldn't
+change their positions because the slippery earth offered no foothold.
+It was impossible to excavate deep because the earth slid down. It was
+a critical moment. Several men had been killed, the wounded were
+moaning bitterly, the dying were groaning.... But the Italian
+bersaglieri did not lose courage and stood up against the foe, showing
+a genuine disregard for their lives. Pinocchio longed to cry. He
+wasn't thinking of the danger to himself, but of the fact that if this
+devilish fire kept up much longer all his bersaglieri would be killed.
+Wasn't there anybody to look out for them? What was our artillery
+doing? Did they really intend to let them all be massacred?
+
+He had scarcely thought this when he heard behind him the thunder of
+Italian guns. A quarter of an hour later and the Austrians were quite
+quiet. But the situation hadn't improved. Orders had come from the
+second line to hold out at all costs because it wouldn't be possible
+to relieve them until the next evening. An attack in force was
+expected every minute.
+
+The captain assembled his company and said: "Men, we must stick and be
+ready for anything. We can't have reinforcements, but to-night they
+will send us _chevaux de frise_ and barbed wire. But I don't want to
+be caught like a bird in a net. We have plenty of 'jelly.' If two
+would volunteer to carry a couple of pounds of it under the
+entanglements of those gentlemen over yonder we might be able to
+change our lodgings. They have a fine trench of reinforced concrete
+with rooms and good beds and bathroom. We'd be better off there than
+in this mud. What do you say, boys? Is there any one who ..."
+
+They didn't even let him finish. All stepped forward, and, if I am to
+tell you the truth, Pinocchio, too, but no one noticed him. Mollica
+and the Bersaglierino were chosen.
+
+It grew dark. Some of them, completely worn out, dozed leaning up
+against the side of the trench. The Bersaglierino was writing rapidly
+a letter in pencil. Mollica had pulled out of his knapsack the old
+newspapers his father had sent him and seemed about to take up his old
+studies of fingerprints. There were tears in his eyes.
+
+"Heh! Mollica, you look as if you weren't pleased with the duty the
+captain has given you."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"But you ought to let me go."
+
+"You? But how do you suppose they would let a boy like you carry
+jelly?"
+
+"Do you think I would eat it all up? I won't say that I mightn't taste
+it, especially if it is that golden-yellow kind that shivers like a
+paralytic old man, but I would carry out the order like any one
+else.... Only, I can't understand how for a little bit of jelly those
+scoundrels will give up their comfortable trench. It's true that they
+eat all sorts of miserable kinds of food and that Esau sold his
+birthright for a mess of pottage, but ..."
+
+"Shut up, you chatterbox! You'll see what will happen. I'll explain to
+you that 'jelly' in war-time is what we call a mixture of stuff that
+when put in a pipe under the wire entanglements and set off by a fuse
+will blow you up sky-high in a thousand pieces, if you don't take to
+your heels in time."
+
+"And you ... want to go and be blown up?"
+
+"No. I hope to come back safe and sound, and I have still to send your
+letter to Franz Joey."
+
+Pinocchio was silent and hid himself in a corner without another word.
+I can't tell you exactly if he had some sad presentiment or if his
+disillusion resulting from Mollica's technical explanation of "jelly"
+had put him in a bad humor. There was no doubt about it--war had
+changed the dictionary. He was still more certain of this when, an
+hour later, he saw the "Frisian horses" arrive. He was expecting
+beasts with at least four legs, and instead he saw them drag in front
+of the trenches a huge roll of iron wound up in an enormous skein of
+barbed wire. But there was still a greater surprise in store for him.
+That very night he was to find out that in war-time not only the value
+of words changes, but that there are some which are canceled from
+certain persons' vocabulary.
+
+It was night ... and there was nothing to be seen and you couldn't
+even hear the traditional fly. From the Austrian trench there came a
+dull regular noise. It seemed as if a lot of pigs were squealing.
+Instead, it was the Croats who were snoring. No one slept in the
+Italian trenches. There was a strange coming and going, a fantastic
+flittering of shadows. There was low talking, commands were passed
+from mouth to mouth and whispered in the ear--every one was making
+preparations. Mollica and the Bersaglierino had put steel helmets on
+their heads and had shields of the same metal on their arms.
+
+"But what are you going to do? You look like the statue of Perseus in
+the costume of a soldier."
+
+"I would almost rather be in his place and with no more clothes than
+he has on instead of in this get-up ... but what's there to be done
+about it? I promised you to take the letter to Franz Joey."
+
+A little later Mollica and Bersaglierino left the trench and wriggled
+along the ground like serpents, carrying with them big metal boxes.
+The bersaglieri took their places behind the loopholes, their muskets
+in position, and stood there motionless, anxious, and restless.
+Pinocchio, too, wanted to see what was happening, and, taking
+advantage of his guardians' carelessness, slipped out of the trench
+and squatted down in a big hole which an enemy projectile had hollowed
+out twenty yards away.
+
+The poor youngster was very sad. The black night, the silence
+everywhere, the preparations he had watched and could not understand,
+were the causes of his melancholy.
+
+"But how under the sun did it ever enter Bersaglierino's head to offer
+himself for this expedition?" he thought. "He might have let some one
+else go. Not so bad for Mollica. He'll eat up the Austrians like
+waffles. If any one dares to play a trick on him he'll land him a few
+good blows and put him where he belongs, but Bersaglierino ... so
+little and so frail.... If any misfortune happens to him ..."
+
+Some time went by, I can't say how long, but it was quite a little
+while, because Pinocchio had almost fallen asleep, when the air was
+shaken by two tremendous explosions. He woke with a start, saw two red
+flashes shining for an instant on a shower of fragments thrown up to a
+great height ... then blackness and the fiendish rattling of the
+machine-guns and crackle of musket fire. Suddenly a long white shaft
+of light broke the darkness, coming from no one knew where, waving to
+the right and to the left, and fixing itself on the ground between the
+two trenches, which were immediately showered by shells.
+
+"And Bersaglierino? And Mollica?" Pinocchio asked himself, anxiously,
+feeling his throat tighten up.
+
+Suddenly a black shadow was outlined in the gleam of a searchlight
+that was operated from a distance. It crawled along the ground, moving
+by starts. They had seen it, too, from the trenches and there were
+confused cries of, "Come on!" ... "Bravo!" ... "A few more steps!" ...
+"Stick to it!"
+
+And the figure seemed to gain new strength and to bound like a wild
+beast. But who was it? Surely the Bersaglierino. The form was small,
+slender, and very quick. Mollica was large and slow. What had become
+of him? Between the roar of the explosions and the whistle of the
+shells there came a shrill cry of anguish. The little shadow slid
+along, then a leap in the silvery ray, and it was lost in the
+blackness of the earth torn by the rain of steel.
+
+"Oh, beasts that they are! They have murdered him!" Pinocchio
+screamed. "Enough! Enough! Wretches! Don't you see that he has ceased
+to move? Stop shooting.... Give him time to recover.... Perhaps he is
+wounded."
+
+It seemed that the Austrian fire grew even more murderous.
+
+Pinocchio, beside himself with fury, rushed out of his hiding-place
+and in a couple of bounds was back in the trench.
+
+"They have wounded Bersaglierino.... He is there ... out there in the
+No Man's Land.... Help him ... don't let him die so."
+
+They sprang over the top to rescue their wounded comrades, but had
+scarcely gone a step before they were lost to him.
+
+Pinocchio lost his head. He sprang out of the dugout and ran as fast
+as he could into the spot still illuminated by the ray of silver. He
+stumbled, fell, got up again, fell once more, but kept on crawling on
+his hands and knees.... He heard a groan, felt a body, lifted it in
+his arms, and, gathering all his strength together, began to drag it
+toward the trench. All at once he felt his legs give way and he let
+out a yell of terror. He was answered by another from a hundred
+valiant throats; he saw a strange flash, felt a hurricane strike him,
+a wave roll over him ... but before losing his senses there came to
+him the cry of victory. The Italian bersaglieri had bayoneted those
+who had wounded Bersaglierino and had won from the enemy one more
+portion of their country.
+
+A little later the stretcher-bearers were able to gather up the
+wounded from the field of honor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_In Which Pinocchio Discovers That Sometimes When You Want to Advance
+You Have to Take a Step Backward_
+
+
+For a long while Pinocchio didn't know whether he was alive or dead.
+Then after a time he seemed to be dreaming, but the dreams were so
+queer that ... just imagine, he thought he was a puppet again, asleep
+on a chair with his feet resting on a brazier full of lighted
+charcoal, that one of his feet was on fire and that the flame, little
+by little, was creeping up his leg. And, just as once before when
+something similar had happened, the dream became a painful reality.
+However, there was another dream that comforted him. A lovely woman's
+smiling face would come close to him and he would hear soft,
+affectionate words. It was the queerest thing possible! It seemed to
+him that this face was set in a lovely frame of light-blue hair which
+came down like a veil, like a cape enfolding the graceful form of a
+young girl. Some one had told him that her name was Fatina, and he
+kept repeating the name, as once ... when he was still a little puppet
+and the girl with blue hair ... But what had happened to him?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One morning he opened his eyes and discovered that he was in a little
+white bed in a white room, and that to right and left of him in two
+other beds were two wounded men all enveloped in bandages.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"Bersaglierino! Bersaglierino!" cried Pinocchio, trying to raise
+himself up in bed. But a horrid pain made him fall back on the pillow
+and forced him to scream loudly. The door of the little room opened
+and a Red Cross nurse in her blue uniform entered swiftly.
+
+"Oh! At last! But be good and don't try to move! The Bersaglierino is
+here on your right; he is better, but you must let him be quiet, and
+you, too, need to rest."
+
+"Tell me, Fatina, is the Bersaglierino really alive?"
+
+"Don't you see him? Here he is. When he wakes up you can say a few
+words to him. Yesterday he was so eager to know about you, but you
+couldn't speak to him."
+
+"Listen, Fatina, and I ... am I really alive?"
+
+"It seems so to me."
+
+"But am I ... made of wood or ..."
+
+"You are made of iron."
+
+"Of iron? Don't joke so with me, Fatina. If you want my nose to grow
+longer, dearest lady, or if you want me to turn back into a wooden
+puppet, I am ready to do so; but not of iron, no. I am too afraid of
+rust."
+
+"But what are you talking about? Let me feel your pulse. No, that's
+all right, no fever. I said you were made of iron because you have
+come out of it all so wonderfully. You were threatened with gas
+gangrene, and if they had not amputated at once, it would have been
+the end of you, but instead ..."
+
+"Please, please ... what did they do to me?"
+
+"They cut off your injured leg."
+
+"My leg!"
+
+"Yes, indeed; they couldn't help it."
+
+"And when did they cut it off?"
+
+"Three days ago."
+
+"You are perfectly certain of this?"
+
+"I was present."
+
+"And I ... wasn't I present?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"And how is it I didn't know anything about it?"
+
+"You were asleep."
+
+"I think it was you who were dreaming. Look."
+
+Before Fatina could stop him Pinocchio caught the covers and threw
+them off. One leg was indeed missing and just the one which he had
+dreamed had been burned by the brazier. He saw a heap of bloody
+bandages and let out such a scream that he made the other two wounded
+start up.
+
+The one on the left, who looked like a monk in a hood, because from
+under the bands which bound his head a long shaggy beard was sticking
+out, cried in annoyance:
+
+"Heh! What is it, a locomotive? You are making as much noise as an
+enemy's cannon."
+
+"Be quiet, be quiet!"
+
+"Bersaglierino, have you seen what they did to me? They've carried off
+one of my legs without asking my permission."
+
+"And they took off one of my arms, and they've made a hole in my head
+and cut open my stomach."
+
+"But what kind of dirty tricks are these? I want my leg.... I want my
+leg!"
+
+"If it were still on you it would be all swollen and black. Be silent,
+shut up, and thank God that they haven't taken the other one. Because
+Major Cutemup is here, and when he begins to amputate it is hard to
+get him to stop. Imagine, they wanted to cut off my nose."
+
+"I want my leg!"
+
+"Be good."
+
+"Fatina, I beg you, make them make me another one. Write to Geppetto
+to make me another one, even of wood, but I want to be able to walk
+and run. I want to go back to the war, I do!"
+
+The patient on the left jumped out of his bed and, in giving him a
+kiss, brushed his face with his bushy beard.
+
+"There, you are a brave boy. You please me.... We will have another
+leg made for you, and if you want to go back to see the Boches you can
+come with me. Sister Fatina, is it not true that they're going to make
+him a new leg?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Of wood?"
+
+"And with machinery inside so that you can move it as if it were a
+real leg."
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"Then ..."
+
+"Will you be good?"
+
+"Yes ... but as soon as I catch sight of Major Cutemup I'll tell him a
+few things I think of him."
+
+"How are you, Bersaglierino?"
+
+"Better, Fatina dear."
+
+"Be brave."
+
+Then she moved softly away, as noiseless as a dream.
+
+"Did you see, Pinocchio? Fatina kept her word. She had scarcely heard
+that I was wounded before she hurried to my bed. She is an angel and I
+am quite happy. But I owe it to you that I am alive. I had four
+bullets in my back.... Those dogs had got the range on me, and if you
+hadn't come to my aid they would have finished me.... And you weren't
+lucky, either--they shot your leg to pieces, and if the company hadn't
+appeared ... But we won! Hurrah for Italy!"
+
+"And Mollica?"
+
+"Dead. They found him near the wire, surrounded by a heap of dead
+enemies. He made a regular slaughter. He had your letter to Franz
+Joseph stuck on the end of his bayonet. Every time that he hit a foe
+he cried, 'Beast of a potato-eater, take this letter and carry it to
+your Joey.'"
+
+"Poor Mollica! If I am able to get back there I'll avenge you."
+
+"I told you I wanted you with me. You will see what we'll do to those
+creatures. I am Captain Teschisso, of the Second Regiment of Alpine
+Troops. What fights we have had! How we have 'strafed' them! A shell
+splinter gave me a whack and carried off one of my ears, but if you
+join me we'll have dozens of them every day."
+
+"Will I go with you? Yes, indeed, if the Bersaglierino ..."
+
+"As far as I am concerned, do what you've a mind to. I shall never
+return to the regiment now.... You can't make war without an arm, but
+..."
+
+Just at this moment the door of the little white room opened and Major
+Cutemup, followed by two young lieutenants, Fatina, and some men
+nurses, came in. He was a short, squatty little man, with smooth face
+and tiny eyes hidden behind gold-rimmed glasses, and with a stomach
+that would have made an alderman jealous. He looked more like a
+cab-driver than like an officer, and even more like a butcher who has
+risen to be master of a shop by selling old beef for veal.
+
+"Good morning, boys. You are getting on finely, eh? When I take hold
+of you you either die or are better off than you were before anything
+happened to you. Let's look at you, Bersaglierino. The arm's doing
+well ... the wound in your head will be healed in ten days or so.
+Thank God that I saved your eye. It was a risk ... we ought to have
+taken it out if we had followed the usual method.... No, no, I find
+you in good condition, so good, in fact, that I can tell you a piece
+of news ... they have recommended you for the silver medal. I believe
+his Majesty will come in person to pin it on your breast. It would be
+a real honor for our hospital.
+
+"And you, lad? But really I don't need to bother about you, either.
+Boys are like lizards--you can cut them in pieces and they keep on
+living."
+
+"Please, please, Mr. Major Carve-Beefsteak, I should like to know who
+gave you permission to cut off my leg."
+
+"What? What? You dare ..."
+
+"There's no good lecturing me, because I am not in the army, as poor
+Mollica used to say, so you don't frighten me worth a soldo. So I am
+just asking you who gave you permission to ... carry off my claw."
+
+"Your claw? The femur was broken, the tibia cracked, the patella
+shattered, your temperature up over a hundred, delirium, threatened
+with gas gangrene.... I couldn't wait until you had gone to the devil
+before asking your permission to amputate. And, moreover, no more
+words about it. I cut when it's my duty to cut. If, in spite of the
+operation, the gangrene had continued I should have amputated your
+other leg as well. So let's look at it. Nurse, undo the bandages."
+
+In a minute the bloody flesh was uncovered. Pinocchio bit his lips in
+order to keep from yelling with pain. Cutemup approached in a solemn
+manner, and, nearsighted as he was, had almost to stick his nose into
+the wound to make his examination.
+
+"Fine.... The healing process has already begun ... the granulation is
+splendid, but have you any pain in the groin, boy?"
+
+"How in the world do you expect me to know what that is?"
+
+"Does it hurt you here?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Have you any pain in the sound leg?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Can you move it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Bend it at the knee."
+
+"I am doing it."
+
+"Again, again, again. Does it pain you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Fine!... Now stretch it out."
+
+He should never have said that. Pinocchio stretched it out with such
+agility that there was no difference from the way he usually
+administered his solemnest kicks. His foot caught Cutemup right in the
+stomach and knocked him breathless into the arms of the young
+lieutenant, who had to resort to artificial respiration to revive him.
+
+The Alpine soldier broke out into such an astonishing laugh from
+beneath his bandages and his beard that the others, Fatina included,
+had to echo him. Pinocchio played 'possum, perfectly still with his
+eyes half closed. When Cutemup, quite recovered, sprang toward him to
+give vent to his just vengeance, he seemed much surprised to see him
+in such a state. He examined him attentively, and, keeping himself a
+respectful distance away, poked with his forefinger two or three times
+the leg which had given him such marvelous proof of vitality and
+energy, then, turning to his colleagues, he began to speak in an
+imposing manner:
+
+"The accident which befell me was the result of the nervous depression
+of the patient. The reflex motions have superiority over the will
+centers. The muscles slacken at the lightest pressure, like a cord of
+a strung bow. The vitality shown by the patient is due to a nervous
+over-excitation, not noticeable until now. I shall keep the patient
+under observation. If you come across similar cases, take notes of
+them that I may include them in my article. I shall order extra
+nutrition and care in building up the patient as soon as the wound has
+healed completely. Sister Fatina, note for the boy special rations of
+filet of beefsteak, roast chicken, eggs, custards well-sweetened, at
+dinner and again at supper."
+
+  [Illustration: HIS FOOT CAUGHT CUTEMUP RIGHT IN THE STOMACH AND
+KNOCKED HIM BREATHLESS]
+
+At this bill of fare Pinocchio's leg by some strange phenomenon began
+to bend again from the knee.
+
+The major, thoroughly absorbed in his lesson, did not notice it: "So,
+then, that is understood. You, Captain Teschisso, are doing
+splendidly; in a few days we'll take the bandage off you. Gentlemen,
+let us go into the next room."
+
+They had scarcely gone out and the door was scarcely closed before
+Pinocchio burst out into such a hearty laugh that the captain and
+Bersaglierino had to laugh, too.
+
+"You don't seem too much depressed."
+
+"What were you doing with that leg in the air?"
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"Do you know, Captain, as my first kick had gained special nourishment
+for me, I wanted to give him another one so that I could get a double
+quantity; then there would have been something for all of you."
+
+"Thank you, you shaved poodle."
+
+Just then Fatina returned and was surprised to see Pinocchio laughing
+so hard that his tongue was hanging out with happiness.
+
+"What's this?"
+
+"Fatina, my compliments. Did you hear what the major ordered? Filet of
+beefsteak, chickens, custards with heaps of sugar, at dinner and again
+at supper."
+
+"You wretch!"
+
+"I am not a wretch; I am a poor, weak invalid and no one had better
+feel the muscles in my legs too much who doesn't want to get kicks in
+the stomach."
+
+"You little beast! Suppose I go and tell the major that ..."
+
+"No, for Heaven's sake! Dear Fatina, keep quiet."
+
+"On one condition."
+
+"Let's hear it."
+
+"That you will be good, that you will be patient and let yourself be
+taken care of until it is time to fit your wooden leg."
+
+"I promise you. You know, once I was made of wood all over. In order
+to get ahead I can even make up my mind to take a step backward."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_Wherein We See Pinocchio's Heart_
+
+
+All three of them were now up again. It was to be for them a day of
+great gladness. Yet all three were in a bad humor. They didn't even
+talk. Captain Teschisso, dressed in a brand-new uniform, couldn't tear
+himself away from the mirror, which he addressed in a low voice:
+
+"Just see what they have made of me. I can't go on this way.... I am
+not presentable. Without an ear, with a slash on the cheek, half my
+beard gone ... I look like a wild animal to be shown at a circus.
+Lord! How many kicks I'd like to give those dogs! They've botched me
+so I'm no longer fit for this world.... It's against the regulations,
+but before I die I want to devour heaps of those curs! Who allows them
+to make war like this? Who permits them to reduce a captain of Alpine
+troops to such a sight? It would be better for me to die at once. I'm
+not good for anything, and that dog of a Cutemup might have made a
+better job of me. Let him show himself and I'll give him a piece of my
+mind."
+
+Poor Teschisso! He was right! His ugly scar did disfigure him. Another
+man would have wept at seeing himself thus; he trembled with eagerness
+to be revenged.
+
+Pinocchio, too, was grumbling like a stewpot, giving vent to his ill
+humor. They had put on him a wooden leg that was a real triumph of
+mechanism. It was jointed like a real one and moved with an automatic
+motion in harmony with his sound leg. Pinocchio had tried to run, to
+jump, and to balance, and had to convince himself that he had not lost
+anything by the exchange. But the leg had one fault--when he extended
+it it unbent too rapidly, hitting the heel on the ground with a noisy
+and annoying sound. And in addition to this the mechanism, which was
+still so new, rattled.
+
+"Plague take it! My own didn't need to be oiled. Who knows how much
+oil this one will expect me to give it? But that I'll make Mr. Cutemup
+pay for. If he comes up to me and repeats that I am better than I
+used to be I'll plant another kick in his stomach, then I'll ask how
+he would manage to walk if it were his, on the tip of his toes, with
+this heel that beats like a drumstick."
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+The Bersaglierino, too, had a wooden left arm. You wouldn't even have
+noticed it. He could move it in any direction, and the gloved
+artificial hand which came out of the sleeve of his gray jacket,
+although a little stiff, could be moved as easily as a real hand. The
+wound that furrowed his forehead didn't disfigure him; indeed, it gave
+to his gentle features a certain air of nobility and fierceness. But
+the Bersaglierino was sad, so sad that if you had looked into his
+eyes you would have been certain that he had to make a great effort
+not to cry. Pinocchio noticed it.
+
+"Tell me, Bersaglierino, what was your business before the war?"
+
+"What's that to you?"
+
+"Oh, I just want to know."
+
+"I was a journalist, a writer."
+
+"Hm! Must be a horrid profession."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you have to work so hard not to die of hunger."
+
+"Who told you so?"
+
+"Nobody. But if you had made a lot of money in your job you wouldn't
+have left it to volunteer, and as you get only fourteen cents a day as
+a volunteer at the front, as a civilian you must have been hard up all
+the year. Then ... you needn't make a face ... you don't write with
+the left hand ... so you can go back to being a journalist, even with
+... the Austrian improvement."
+
+He hoped to drive away his sadness by saying it in this way, but
+instead he only increased it.
+
+"Leave me in peace, puppet!" he said, roughly and with such a stern
+tone that Pinocchio in his turn longed to cry.
+
+At this moment the door of the room was opened with great violence and
+Major Cutemup, as if hurled by a catapult, made his appearance,
+followed by Fatina and by a regiment of soldiers and nurses. He was
+red as the comb of a cock at his first crow, wheezed every now and
+then like a pair of bellows, and dripped sweat as a bucket just out of
+the well drips water.
+
+"Sister Fatina, I rely on you ... I rely on you to see that everything
+is in order. Four soldiers will wash the windows ... six will scrub
+the floors, which must shine like a mirror, and everything must be
+done in ten minutes. And you, boys, put on your special uniforms.... I
+have great news for you. His Majesty has announced his visit to the
+hospital; with his own august hands he will bestow the decorations.
+You, Bersaglierino, who are among these fortunate ones, take care to
+be irreproachable in your appearance. You, Captain ..."
+
+"What! What did he say? Do you think I can let his Majesty see me in
+this frightful condition? Half a beard, half a mustache, minus an ear,
+half a face ..."
+
+"But ... I don't know what you can do about it. Fix it up the best you
+can."
+
+"Certainly I'll fix it up, I'll ... Good Heavens! man, let me go to a
+barber who can make me look like a Christian, because you, Major
+Cutemup, have made me resemble one of Menelik's crew."
+
+"But ..."
+
+"But I swear that I won't let the dogs who got me in this condition
+stick their fingers on my face, I tell you."
+
+"Teschisso!"
+
+"No, I won't let them touch me."
+
+"Captain Teschisso, I must remind you of the respect due ..."
+
+"What's that? Major Cutemup ... did you think I was talking of you?
+Not a thought of doing so. I meant those dogs of Austrians."
+
+"A-a-a-h! Then be off to the barber's."
+
+"Thanks. I'll have him fix me up in a minute."
+
+"Boy, hurry up. His Majesty is coming."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten minutes later everything was shining like a mirror. The soldiers
+were already at work in the adjoining room. Pinocchio had disappeared.
+Teschisso had gone to be shaved. Fatina was arranging the white
+window-curtains. The Bersaglierino was seated on his bed, his right
+arm resting on his knee and his chin held in the hollow of his hand.
+
+"What's the matter? What is it, Bersaglierino?"
+
+He didn't answer, and Fatina, after having looked at him a minute with
+her large, soft eyes, came up nearer and sat down beside him on the
+little white bed.
+
+"Tell me what's the trouble, Bersaglierino. Why are you crying? Why
+don't you make yourself handsome? Didn't you hear? The King is coming
+to give you the medal."
+
+"Why should I care about that? What do you think that means to me,
+Fatina?"
+
+And then, since she seemed much astonished at his words, he continued,
+vehemently:
+
+"Why, indeed, should I care about that?... After they have sent me
+away from here I shall go back to living alone like a dog ... to
+fighting every day for my existence. Who will get any satisfaction
+from the reward the King's hand has bestowed on me? No one. Perhaps
+the day will come when I shall have to pin the medal on my coat to
+keep the boys in the streets from making fun of me, the poor maimed
+creature who will wander about playing a street-organ."
+
+"Oh, Bersaglierino! I never imagined you could talk like that. I don't
+want you to talk so."
+
+And she spoke with so much feeling that he, fearing he had offended
+her, started to beg her pardon:
+
+"Fatina ..."
+
+"Tell me, aren't you glad to have done your duty, to have given your
+blood for your country? Didn't you volunteer? Didn't you go willingly
+through the barbed wire to open a road of victory for your country?
+And now you are almost blaming yourself for the good you have done,
+for fear of the morrow. And you think yourself destined to end as a
+laughing-stock of horrid little children? Oh, but you are bad! Tell
+me, are you really so sure that you are alone in the world, that there
+is no one who will rejoice to see shining on your breast the medal
+your country has bestowed on you?"
+
+"Ah, if it were so, Fatina, if it were true!"
+
+"Do you believe that no one has followed you in thought through all
+your dangers on the field of honor, that no one suffered, knowing you
+were wounded, or trembled at the thought of your bed of pain? Do you
+really believe that there is no one to rejoice at seeing you take up
+again your place in the world? You are young, full of ardor and
+intelligence ..."
+
+"But I am poor, so poor!"
+
+"You can get rich by working. You fought the war with weapons;
+continue it with the pen. Write what you have seen; you will make a
+name for yourself and some day will be the pride of your family."
+
+"I! Don't make fun of me, Fatina. I, wounded, maimed, will never find
+a woman to link her life with mine."
+
+"Bersaglierino, I, too, am alone in the world, free to dispose of
+myself. I am not rich, but I have enough to live on; I am not a
+professor, but I am widely educated.... I will be frank; if to-morrow
+a brave man like you, in the same condition, should come and ask me
+..."
+
+"To be his wife?"
+
+"I should say yes, and I should be proud. Do you understand? Proud of
+him and of the medal shining on his breast, which would seem like my
+own...."
+
+"Oh! Fatina, Fatina!"
+
+He could say no more. Tears choked him. But she looked at him tenderly
+with her kind eyes, and in them, too two large tears were shining.
+
+Pinocchio could not stand any more of this. For half an hour he had
+been hidden under the bed, had therefore listened to this noble
+dialogue, and had had to bite his lips to keep from crying. But as it
+was not amusing he could not stand it any longer. He crawled very
+quietly from his hiding-place, approached Fatina and Bersaglierino
+cautiously and without their seeing him or being able to put up any
+resistance, he gathered the two heads in his arms, brought them close
+together, and held them close, covering them both with kisses.
+
+Pinocchio's generous and lovable impulse had found the way to unite
+these two beings whom destiny had brought together. The picture they
+made was interesting and touching and would have touched every one who
+knew them, if at this moment Captain Teschisso had not entered, quite
+made over by the barber.
+
+"What ... what are you doing? Aren't you preparing for the august
+visit?"
+
+"Augusta? Who's she?"
+
+"What? Don't you know that the King, the commander-in-chief of our
+army, the first soldier of New Italy, the head of the state, the
+corporal of the Zouaves, like his grandfather before him, the flower
+of gentlemen, a good father of his family, one of the wisest
+sovereigns of Europe...? In short, you'll see him soon. Hurry up,
+because when I came in the royal automobile had been sighted.... Don't
+you think that dog of a barber fixed me up fine? Anyway, he was able
+to get rid of the half of my beard which the Germans shaved with a
+shell."
+
+The King? This short word frightened Pinocchio terribly. This man who
+commanded everybody, who could put everybody in prison, who was named
+Majesty, August, and Victor Emanuel all at the same time, who caused
+the rooms to be polished in five minutes, who set Cutemup to
+trembling, who kept all the wounded in the hospital in order, all of
+them men of valor who had held their own against hundreds of the
+foe--frightened him like a hobgoblin or something similar. At the
+very thought of having his glance fall upon him he felt goose-flesh
+all over his body.
+
+"It isn't fear; it is lack of courage or something of that sort, but I
+must get out of the way. I have never had anything to do with kings
+and I don't know much about the way they think. If Augusta, or his
+Majesty, is in a bad humor and should find my presence among the
+soldiers out of order, he can bat his eye at Cutemup, make him a sign,
+and ... whack! ... my head would roll on the ground. Wouldn't that
+murderer of a surgeon be glad to be revenged for the kick I gave him
+in the stomach? Yes, I must find some way ..."
+
+His musings were interrupted by three bugle notes which brought every
+one to attention.
+
+"There he is! There he is!"
+
+Then resounded enthusiastic hurrahs for the King.
+
+Pinocchio disappeared under Bersaglierino's bed ... popped up again,
+disguised himself, and no one noticed that ...
+
+Captain Teschisso and the Bersaglierino stood at attention at the foot
+of their beds, straight and immovable, awaiting the royal visit. The
+King in his soldier way entered without ceremony, followed by his
+aide-de-camp, General Win-the-War, Major Cutemup, and a number of
+other officers of the garrison, Red Cross nurses, and other wounded
+who had come from their rooms to take part in the ceremony. It didn't
+seem possible that the room could hold so many persons, but all of
+them crowded in, squeezing together in order to see the King and to be
+near to him. And his face, which was wrinkled, was illuminated by a
+kindly smile that spread out from his thick mustache grown prematurely
+white. He gave Teschisso a military salute, then shook his hand
+vigorously and said:
+
+"I am so pleased to see you recovered. I am sure that when you go back
+to your regiment I shall hear more of you. You Alpine troopers are all
+of you wonderful soldiers."
+
+"For Italy and for our King, your Majesty."
+
+"For our Italy greater than ever."
+
+"She shall be, if we have to shed all our blood."
+
+"Such is my belief."
+
+Major Cutemup had suddenly turned crimson with rage, and approached
+Fatina, his large, angry eyes scowling at her from behind his
+eyeglasses.
+
+"Why have you treated me so?" he asked, in a low, furious voice.
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes. I told you to put everything in order."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Look at that mess!" and he nodded toward a kind of clothes-hanger
+near the head of Bersaglierino's bed, on which were hung a hat with
+cock plumes, a coat, with a pair of trousers all torn and ragged and
+dirty. It was the uniform the brave young soldier had worn on the
+field and which Fatina had hidden under the bed a little while ago.
+
+Fatina didn't know what to say. The sudden appearance of this
+clothes-hanger, ... those clothes spread out, affected her so that she
+had no thought of the major or of his rage, which escaped in such
+violent outbursts that they would have started a windmill going.
+
+The King had approached Bersaglierino, and General Win-the-War
+presented him, with these words:
+
+"Your Majesty, this brave soldier has been proposed for the medal of
+valor for the following reasons: enrolled as a volunteer, he took part
+in the first battles with the enemy, giving an example of courage and
+discipline; he volunteered to blow up the enemy wire defenses; he
+carried out the assignment given him, and, unhurt himself, he tried to
+free a comrade caught on the barbed wire and managed to put to flight
+an enemy patrol which attacked him. Then he was hit several times by
+machine-gun fire. Carried to the first-aid station, he showed the
+greatest self-control and cheered for his King and his country when he
+learned that his efforts had enabled his company to take an important
+trench from the enemy."
+
+The King took from the hand of his adjutant a silver medal hung from a
+light-blue ribbon and pinned it on Bersaglierino's breast, who was so
+pale with emotion that he looked as if he would faint, then clasped
+the soldier's right hand in both of his and said:
+
+"Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! You have done your duty as an Italian soldier.
+Treasure this medal which your country gives you by the hand of your
+King. Wear it always proudly on your breast. Every one should know
+that you deserve it and that they should follow your example.... You
+are crying? But it is with happiness, is it not?"
+
+"Yes, your Majesty."
+
+"And now that you have recovered, what will you do?"
+
+"I shall go back to my profession. I am a journalist."
+
+"And ... will you be able?"
+
+"I hope so. I was very severely wounded, but ..."
+
+"You cured him, Major Cutemup?"
+
+"I myself, your Majesty; he was one of the worst cases. The left arm
+carried away by a shell splinter, wounded on the temple, and
+threatened with damage to his eye, wounded in his third upper rib and
+another wound in the groin with lesion in the intestines. An abdominal
+operation was performed, his arm was amputated and there was a suture
+in the occipital region.... The poor fellow has certainly had his
+share."
+
+"You can see that by looking at his glorious uniform; it is indeed a
+document."
+
+The uniform in question trembled and the plumed hat shook.
+
+"Yes ... truly ... but ..."
+
+"Would you deny it?"
+
+"No, your Majesty, I wanted to say that that uniform shouldn't be
+there just now. It is a glorious object, but in a hospital ward it may
+have infectious germs.... I had given orders to ... but ... and if
+your Majesty will permit, I will give orders to remove it at once."
+
+He had scarcely finished speaking when the coat, trousers, and hat
+suddenly fell to the ground with such a curious noise that Cutemup
+could not help running up to see what had happened. Imagine how he
+looked when he found himself face to face with Pinocchio, cold with
+terror. He tried to hide him with the glorious garments in order to
+carry him off, bundled up in them, but the King turned and asked:
+
+"What's happened?"
+
+"Your Majesty, I don't know how to explain it.... Under these clothes
+was hidden a wretch who ..."
+
+"Ah! I saw. I know him. Pinocchio is one of my old and dear
+acquaintances. I am glad to see him among my soldiers, in
+semi-military garb. Leave to Bersaglierino this uniform that is dear
+to him. It will be a glorious souvenir for his family. Good-by, brave
+soldier; remember your King. I called to you in the hour of need; if
+to-morrow you have need of me, remember that I shall never forget
+those who have served me on the battle-field."
+
+And the good King, the loving father, the model soldier, turned to
+leave, followed by his suite.
+
+Before he had crossed the threshold Pinocchio had sprung to his feet,
+flung him two kisses with the tips of his fingers, and began to dance
+like mad with happiness. His wooden leg made a horrible noise. Fatina,
+fearing Cutemup's anger, begged him to behave.
+
+"What? What? If Cutemup scolds me, woe to him. Did you hear? The King
+is an old acquaintance of mine. If he gets offended with me, I'll take
+out my paper and pen and inkstand and I will write: 'Dear King, you
+are the best and kindest man in the world, but do me the favor to cut
+off the head, or some other organ, from the major who amputated my leg
+without permission. In this world an eye for an eye, a head for a leg.
+Many kisses from your Pinocchio.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_How Pinocchio Came Face to Face with Our Alpine Troops_
+
+
+If you had come across him unexpectedly in his new costume I assure
+you you would not have recognized him. On his head was a woolen helmet
+from which emerged only his eyes and the point of his nose; on his
+back was a short coat of goatskin which swelled him out like a German
+stuffed with beer and sausage; his legs were lost in a pair of big
+boots with lots of nails. Around his waist was a huge belt of leather
+from which hung a number of small rope ends, and in his hand he
+carried a splendid stick with an iron point. Captain Teschisso was a
+gentleman and wanted his new orderly to be magnificently equipped.
+That odd creature of a mountaineer amused himself thoroughly with the
+rascal Pinocchio. It didn't seem real to see him struggling to
+conquer the mountain peaks and ready to fight those dogs of Austrians
+who were up there and with whom he had so many accounts to settle.
+They had arrived one morning at Fort ---- (censor). Teschisso had been
+greeted like one raised from the dead. Finally the soldiers had thrown
+their arms about his neck and kissed and hugged him. They all seemed
+like one family, and for a fact they did all resemble one another a
+little: tall, with extraordinary beards, with muscular legs straight
+as a column and hands that seemed made to give vigorous blows.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"Where is my company?"
+
+"On ---- [oh, that censor!], at nine thousand feet altitude."
+
+"All well?"
+
+"'Most all."
+
+"And the Boches, where are they?"
+
+"Bah! We've got them on the run."
+
+"Send my things up to me with the first supply division; I'm off now
+at once."
+
+"Nine feet of snow and a biting wind."
+
+"Heavens! If I were sure of finding that dog who cut my beard I would
+go to hell itself."
+
+"I am thinking less of you than of your little orderly."
+
+"Ha! That youngster has a wooden leg and is as hardy as a goat."
+
+Pinocchio, to show off, whirled his leg around and with a shy glance
+convinced himself that in a wink of the eye he had won the respect of
+the little garrison.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Listen, Captain, if you give me something to eat I'll go ahead; if
+you don't, here's where I stay."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"How indeed! Did you understand that I am hungry?"
+
+"And I have nothing more to give you to eat."
+
+"And I stop here."
+
+"You'll get caught in a blizzard and buried in snow and will be frozen
+hard like Neapolitan ice-cream."
+
+"But ... I'm hungry."
+
+"You have eaten two rations of bread, a box of conserved beef, nearly
+half a pound of chocolate ..."
+
+"Is it my fault if the air of these mountains makes me as hungry as a
+wolf? You should have told me before we left. Now I know why you are
+always saying that you would like to eat so many Austrians. But if you
+think I can get used to the same diet you are much mistaken."
+
+"Are you coming or aren't you?"
+
+"Is it much farther?"
+
+"Do you see that cloud up there?"
+
+"I defy any one not to see it."
+
+"When that is passed there is a crack in the mountain called Spaccata;
+we must cross that and we are there--at least if they haven't gone on
+ahead."
+
+"In the clouds? Really in the clouds?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Listen, Captain, do I really seem to you as much of a fool as that?"
+
+"Just now, yes."
+
+"Thanks, but you can go in the clouds by yourself; I'll turn back and
+bid you farewell."
+
+He tried to make one of his usual pirouettes to turn around, but the
+snow slipped under his feet and he fell, sitting down, and, sliding on
+the white surface, was precipitated down the slope of the mountain
+with terrifying speed.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"Help! Help!"
+
+"Stick your staff in! Stick your staff in!" yelled Teschisso, who
+already believed him lost.
+
+He had need to yell. Pinocchio was flying along like a little steamer
+under forced draught and couldn't hear anything, I assure you.
+Suddenly he stopped as if he were nailed to the snow. That was to be
+expected, you say, with that air of superior beings you assume every
+now and then. I know--but I can tell you Pinocchio didn't expect it,
+nor even Teschisso, who was leaping down to help his little friend.
+
+"Are you hurt?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Do you feel ill?"
+
+"No, not exactly ill, but I suffered terribly from--lack of courage."
+
+"Why don't you get up?"
+
+"I'm afraid of sliding off again."
+
+"Let me help you."
+
+Captain Teschisso took hold of the rope Pinocchio had tied around his
+waist and pulled one end of it through his leather belt, fastened the
+other end round his body, and, after planting his feet firmly, said:
+"Take hold of the rope and pull yourself up. You are quite safe; the
+mountain will crumble before I fall."
+
+Pinocchio did his best to get on his feet, but couldn't succeed. His
+hinder parts adhered to the crust of the snow as if some magician had
+glued them firmly. Teschisso, who had little patience and thought that
+Pinocchio was feigning in order not to have to climb the mountain,
+gave such a vigorous pull on the rope tied to the boy's belt that he
+jerked him up, swung him through the air for several feet, and flung
+him face downward on a heap of snow as downy as a feather-bed. A piece
+of gray cloth left behind showed the spot where Pinocchio had been
+miraculously halted in his precipitous descent. Teschisso glanced at
+it and couldn't keep back one of his loud, honest mountain laughs.
+Pinocchio, believing he was being swung around for fun, sprang to his
+feet, so furious that the captain's hilarity grew even stronger and
+louder.
+
+"Heavens! And you can thank Heaven that you are still in the land of
+the living. Look there and feel the back of your trousers. Hah, hah,
+hah! Don't you understand yet what has happened to you? You were
+caught in a wolf-trap which the Austrians put there to catch some of
+us, and instead you were the one, which isn't the same thing at all."
+
+  [Illustration: PINOCCHIO DID HIS BEST TO GET ON HIS FEET, BUT COULDN'T
+SUCCEED]
+
+Notwithstanding the laughter of the captain, Pinocchio's anger
+evaporated in a second. His eyes were fixed on the scraps of his
+trousers that still hung on the teeth of the trap and his hands were
+rubbing the frozen surface left uncovered. He longed to cry, and felt
+so ridiculous that he was almost on the point of flinging himself
+again down the snowy slope.
+
+"Come on, come on! There's no time to lose. There is a long road to go
+and the clouds are hanging lower. There's no sense in your staying
+there like a macaw, weeping for the seat of your breeches. When we
+arrive up there I'll have the company's tailor mend them for you.
+You've got to march, and no more nonsense. Forward, march!"
+
+"Captain, it's impossible."
+
+"Heavens alive! How impossible?"
+
+"I am not presentable."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"If we find the enemy and the Austrians see me with my trousers in
+such a state, they will say that the Italian army ..."
+
+"Fool! The Italian army never turns its rear to the enemy, and you
+won't, either."
+
+"But ..."
+
+"If you are afraid of taking cold in your spine that's another matter.
+If that's the case let's see what can be done."
+
+Captain Teschisso turned Pinocchio over, took a copy of a newspaper
+out of his pocket, folded it over four times, and stuck it into the
+hole of the trousers. And he did it so well that the "Latest News"
+with the headlines seemed to be framed in the ragged edges of the
+cloth.
+
+"There you are. Are you satisfied?"
+
+To tell the truth, he would have preferred to consider a little before
+answering, but the captain didn't give him the time. He started off
+with a quick stride, pulling the rope after him which he had fastened
+to his belt, as if bringing a calf to the butcher.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I do not know if you, my children, have ever been up in the high
+mountains. You must know that after you reach a certain altitude,
+whether because the air becomes rarefied or because of the silence
+that surrounds you, you seem to be living another life in another
+world. Your breath grows shorter; it seems as if you could not draw a
+long one, while the lungs are so full of oxygen that the heart beats
+more rapidly; then fatigue is followed by a condition of strange
+torpor. Nevertheless, you continue to climb without effort, as if the
+legs moved automatically. If you speak, the voice reaches the ears
+faintly as if it came from a distance. Sometimes you have a certain
+discomfort called mountain-sickness, which makes the temples throb and
+brings with it such a languor that the traveler is forced to give up
+his ascent. Pinocchio, who for some time had been experiencing all
+these sensations peculiar to the high mountains, found himself
+suddenly hidden in a fog so thick that he couldn't see a hand's-breath
+before his nose.
+
+Not seeing Teschisso any more, and not feeling his numbed legs move,
+and feeling himself dragged upward and upward through the darkness as
+if by some prodigious force, he really imagined himself to have
+entered a new world, and was seized by such a terror that he began to
+scream as if his throat were being cut. But, seeing that his voice
+didn't carry far and that Teschisso was not affected by it, he thought
+it easier to let himself be dragged along and to spare his breath for
+a better cause.
+
+"I'd like to know where that creature is dragging me," he began to
+grumble in a low voice like a somnambulist in the dark to give himself
+courage. "I'd like to know where he is taking me. I am almost
+beginning to believe that I am really in the clouds, but I'd like to
+know what need there is to climb 'way up here to fight when there is
+plenty of room down below. Anyway, I don't believe that we'll find a
+single Austrian up here in the clouds; it's just a fancy of the
+captain, who must be a trifle crazy. Once I heard a country priest say
+that the Heavenly Father lives in the clouds to let the water down
+when the peasants need it to water their cabbages and turnips, and to
+keep the sun lighted to warm those who have no clothes. It looks to me
+as if He had let the Alpine troops take His place.
+
+"Hum! Let's see how this is going to come out. All I care about is to
+fill my stomach when we arrive, because I am hungry and can't stand it
+any longer. I've been eating snow for an hour now, but I don't get any
+nourishment from that. I am beginning to think I was better off where
+I was before. If Bersaglierino hadn't been injured I'd still be with
+him and his fine regiment. At least down there I could hear some
+noise ... patapin! patapum ... pum! Here there's nothing but snow and
+ice, not a living person to be seen. I should just like to know with
+whom we can fight. In any case, if the Austrians are up there it seems
+to me it'll be hard to get close enough to bother them.... But it's
+easy to see that the air up there isn't for me; I can scarcely go on,
+but if I slip I'd have to fall all the way, as I did this morning. If
+I hadn't been so frightened I should almost have enjoyed it. I went
+along like a trolley-car, and such speed! But I left my trousers on
+the way. A nice sight I'll be when I'm introduced to the company with
+the newspaper on ... the rear front! And, to tell the truth, it
+doesn't keep me very warm. I feel a little cold in my back. I don't
+know whether it really comes from that, but I feel it, almost--if I
+didn't feel so well--as if I were going to be sick."
+
+Teschisso noticed the dead weight on the rope he was pulling and
+absent-mindedly quickened his pace, so terrifyingly horizontal. If the
+boy had fainted it wouldn't be an easy matter to carry him to safety
+in such weather. Although he knew the rocks inch by inch, it was not
+easy to find the way in the whiteness of the snow nor to judge how
+much more of the road there still remained to cover, on account of the
+fog which hid the landscape. He was reproaching himself for not having
+listened to the advice of his comrades at the fort, who had advised
+him to delay his climb, when he heard a strange metallic noise which
+grew stronger each moment.
+
+"No so bad. Here we are!"
+
+He took a few steps more, then, pulling from his pocket a horn
+whistle, he blew several short, shrill blasts. He was answered by a
+dozen voices, one deep one calling:
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"Friends."
+
+"Pasquale."
+
+"Pinerolo."
+
+"I'm well. Who are you?"
+
+"Captain Teschisso."
+
+"Bah! Don't believe it."
+
+"Here, you dog! I tell you it is I."
+
+"Captain Teschisso is killed. Too bad. I saw him fall down in the
+valley."
+
+"Oh, did you, Sergeant Minestron?"
+
+"I'll be dogged if it isn't he; it really is he!"
+
+From the fog emerged several Alpine figures; they came nearer, growing
+more distinct, and then there was a yell of delight.
+
+"It is he in flesh and blood. Hurrah!"
+
+"Hurrah for our captain!"
+
+"Thank God that he is really alive."
+
+"Lieutenant, Lieutenant, come here ... a surprise!"
+
+"Captain, how many surprises?"
+
+"Let me get my breath; you are suffocating me with your hugs. Where
+are they?"
+
+"The Austrians?"
+
+"Heavens! Whom do you suppose I'm talking about? I came up here for
+the express purpose of getting even with them!"
+
+"They are a long distance away, Captain. We must transport our
+artillery up to Mount X [censor]; there we'll go for them."
+
+"And have you got the _filovia_ [aerial railway] in working order for
+that purpose?"
+
+"Yes, indeed! They have been working on it for three days."
+
+"And the company?"
+
+"They are intrenched in the hut on Mount X with the battalion."
+
+"It will take four good hours to get there."
+
+"Even more, Captain."
+
+"And how will I manage to tow along this lump of a Pinocchio who is
+half dead with mountain-sickness?"
+
+"Pinocchio?"
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Pull the rope and take him off my back; he has tired me out."
+
+Pinocchio, who was in a state of great weakness and curiously sleepy,
+felt himself lifted up and whirled around to the outburst of loud
+laughter. It seemed to him that something slipped down his throat
+which burned and made him cough and sneeze ... then he thought he was
+stretched out on a bed that was rather hard, but covered with warm and
+heavy coverings; then ... he experienced a strange feeling of comfort
+disturbed only by a long, monotonous, persistent humming.
+
+If he had been able to notice what was happening to him he would
+either have died of fright or he would have believed himself in the
+very hands of God. Fastened to the gun-carriage of a six-inch cannon,
+suspended in the car of a _filovia_, he was traveling over the abyss
+which separates two of our giant Alps. Below him was a sea of clouds,
+above the beautiful blue sky, all about him the gleam of white snow,
+and on the snow here and there a group of little gray points, like
+grains of sand lost in all this immensity. Those were our Alpine
+troops, the dear big boys who were laughing at the joke played on
+Pinocchio, and defying serenely all the obstacles that nature opposed
+to their victorious advance on Italian soil which Austria's power had
+for so many years disputed with us.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Pinocchio regained his senses he found himself lying on the
+ground wrapped up in coverlets and warm as a bun just out of the oven.
+Above his head dangled horizontally the huge basket from which he had
+been flung by the shock of its sudden halt, and which swung on the
+steel cables of the _filovia_ as if it were weary of being up there
+and eager to set about its job. All about was the gleam of the snow,
+even though the light was growing paler every moment. I bet you a
+soldo against a lira what hour it was. But Pinocchio guessed it from
+the odor of cooking which sweetened the air all about, an odor which
+would have brought a dead dyspeptic to life. He sniffed the air like a
+bloodhound, rolled his eyes in every direction, in all corners, to
+discover the spot whence came the delicious fragrance, but couldn't
+see anything but snow, nothing, not even a curl of distant smoke. He
+was so hungry that he thought he would faint.
+
+"I am dreaming with eyes open. How is it possible that there should be
+in this desert pastry covered with caramel sauce? Because I know I am
+not mistaken ... the odor I smell is just that. If I had only a piece
+of bread, by means of my nose and by means of my mouth I could fool
+myself into believing that I was dining magnificently, but ..."
+
+But the odor affected him so strongly that he had to get up to limber
+up his muscles. He had scarcely got to his feet when a strange thing
+happened--from the very spot where he had been lying a puff of smoke
+rose gently upward, and this smoke had precisely the odor of pastry
+covered with caramel sauce.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+Pinocchio crossed his hands over his empty stomach and stood for a
+moment pondering. Never in all his life had he had presented to him
+so difficult a problem as this to solve. He thought and thought, and,
+like Galileo, had recourse to the experimental method. He knelt down
+in the snow and began to scrape it away with his hands on the spot
+where his body, covered by the latest issue of the newspaper, had left
+an impression. The smell of caramel sauce kept growing more fragrant,
+and Pinocchio's tongue licked the end of his nose so solemnly that he
+would have made the inventor of handkerchiefs blush with shame.
+Suddenly a deep opening appeared under the snow. Pinocchio stuck his
+arms in up to the elbows and uttered a shriek of terror. His hands and
+wrists were held as in a fiery vise and his arms were pulled so
+violently that he was jerked face down on the earth and his nose stuck
+into the snow.
+
+If he had not been in such an uncomfortable position and had been able
+to look over his shoulder he would have seen four devils of Alpine
+troopers advancing very quietly, guns pointed and bayonets fixed. It
+could be only a starved Austrian who would attempt to enter through
+the dugout's little window cut through the snow into the officers'
+mess, and they intended giving him a fine welcome. A corporal with a
+reddish beard which hung down to his stomach stood two paces away,
+ready to give him a bayonet thrust that would have run him through
+like a snipe on a spit, but suddenly he focused his eyes on a certain
+point, advanced on his hands and knees, and began to read the "Latest
+News" which he had caught sight of in the seat of Pinocchio's
+trousers.
+
+The Alpine troops are the bravest soldiers in the world; if any one
+doubts this let him ask the hunters of that foolish gallows-bird of an
+emperor; but they are not all well educated, and for this reason
+Corporal Scotimondo, as soon as he had spelled out the interesting
+headline, signaled to his comrades to advance cautiously.
+
+You can't have the faintest idea of how important a newspaper
+becomes, even if it is not a particularly late one, up there among
+those snow-clad peaks where our soldiers were fighting for a greater
+Italy. So this editorial, which contained the news of the miraculous
+conquest of the Col di Lana, deserved to be preserved in the archives
+among the masterpieces of our glory, instead of in the seat of
+Pinocchio's trousers.
+
+As I have told you, Corporal Scotimondo could scarcely spell, but
+among his three comrades Private Draghetta was looked upon as a
+genius, because as a civilian he had been a clerk in Cuneo. But
+Draghetta, who could see the Austrians a mile off and when he saw them
+never failed to knock them over with a shot from his gun, was
+nearsighted as a mole, and when he wanted to read had to rub his nose
+into the print.
+
+When Pinocchio felt Draghetta's nose tickle him he began to kick like
+a donkey stung by a gadfly.
+
+"Hold him tight; tie him. We've taken the Col di Lana! The Col di Lana
+is ours!"
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Is it true?"
+
+"Read it, Draghetta ... don't be afraid ... I'll hold him for you."
+
+Scotimondo sat astride Pinocchio's back and squeezed him with his
+knees so hard that he took his breath away.
+
+"'Yesterday our brave Alpine troops, supported by infantry regiments,
+by means of a brilliant attack gained the highest summit of the Col di
+Lana, which is now safely in our possession.' ... Hurrah!"
+
+"Hurrah for Italy!"
+
+"Hurrah for the King!"
+
+They were crazy with joy and danced about on the snow like fiends,
+throwing their plumed hats up into the air, waving their guns above
+their heads. Suddenly, just as if they had risen from the ground, a
+hundred soldiers appeared and surrounded them.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"What has happened?"
+
+"The Col di Lana is ours!"
+
+"Hurrah for Italy!"
+
+"Who told you so?"
+
+"Where did you hear it?"
+
+"In the latest news of the _Corriere_."
+
+"Are you certain?"
+
+"Where did you find it?"
+
+"If you don't believe it, ask Draghetta."
+
+All this noise, this rushing out of the trenches and the soldiers
+staying in the open, was against regulations, so that Lieutenant
+Sfrizzoli couldn't let it pass without giving vent to one of his usual
+fits of rage. Red as a radish, he rushed toward Draghetta, shoving
+apart the group of rejoicing Alpine soldiers, and stopped in front of
+him, legs wide apart, and with fists clenched.
+
+"Is it you, Draghetta, who have set the camp in such an uproar?"
+
+"Not I, sir; it is the Col di Lana."
+
+"What? What? What?"
+
+"We've taken it, sir."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"I read it myself."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"On ... on ..."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I don't want to be lacking in respect, sir, to my superior officer,
+no matter what the occasion may be ..."
+
+"Stupid! Tell me where you read it."
+
+"On the frontispiece of a book without words belonging to an Austrian
+soldier who ..."
+
+Draghetta didn't succeed in getting out another word. Something
+interposed between him and the lieutenant with a lightning-like
+rapidity ... and he felt a terrible kick in the shins which made him
+roll over on the ground with pain.
+
+"Mr. Lieutenant, it is I ... the scout Pinocchio, under Captain
+Teschisso's protection. I took part in the campaign on the Isonzo and
+left a leg there and in its place I now have a wooden leg of perfect
+Italian manufacturing. He told you what he thought was so, but I beg
+to convince you of the contrary. But the news about the Col di Lana is
+true, as true as can be. Here is the _Corriere_ which was on the
+frontispiece ... of my book without words, in the seat of my trousers.
+But, as I can't stand the cold, I beg you to have a patch put on and
+to have served to me a plate of that pastry cooked under the snow,
+because I am so hungry I could eat even you."
+
+Shortly after the delighted Pinocchio sat in front of a dish piled
+high with spaghetti, and surrounded by soldiers of the company who
+never stopped asking him questions about how the war was going down in
+the plains. With his mouth full he kept turning to this one and that
+one, uttering inarticulate sounds that might have come from a sucking
+pig.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The arrival of Captain Teschisso was the signal for a furious attack.
+He had seen in the distance a long file of the enemy clad in white
+shirts moving across the snow; he had hurried to the dugout to give
+the alarm and, taking command of the company, had flung himself on the
+foe, who, relying too much on the secrecy of his attack, was beaten
+and put to flight.
+
+Pinocchio had assisted in the action at a loophole in the trench,
+armed with the finest of spy-glasses. The Alpine troops had performed
+prodigious deeds of valor. The captain came back with two prisoners,
+one a Hungarian and one a Croat, whom he held by the collars as if
+they were two mice surprised while robbing tripe from the larder.
+
+"Heavens! What blows!" he cried, happily, to the soldiers who
+surrounded him, rejoicing. "But, boys, I won't let them sleep
+to-night. We must get ready for an attack in force. We must make these
+pigs sing!"
+
+There was no time to pay any attention to them. A few moments later a
+rain of shells began to fall around the neighborhood of the dugout.
+The Austrians wanted to revenge themselves from a distance for their
+sudden rout. Teschisso ordered four mountain guns which had just
+arrived by the _filovia_ to be mounted on the gun-carriages, assembled
+his men, and ran to take up his position in an excavation nearly a
+mile away whence it was possible to observe the enemy's position.
+Pinocchio and Ciampanella, the company cook, remained behind to guard
+the dugout, and to them had been assigned the care of the two
+prisoners from whom Teschisso hoped later to obtain some definite
+information.
+
+  [Illustration: CIAMPANELLA, THE COMPANY COOK]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_How Pinocchio Made Two Beasts Sing--Contrary to Nature_
+
+
+Excuse me, my children, for not having presented Ciampanella to you
+before. Ciampanella was a pure-blooded Roman, born under the shadow of
+the Capitol, like--the wolf kept at the cost of the City Commune. If
+Francis Joseph had seen him he would have appointed him at once as
+royal hangman because he had a gallows countenance and a body like a
+gigantic negro. Yet he was the best-hearted man in the world, so good
+that he wouldn't harm a fly.
+
+This evening he was in such a good humor that he made even Pinocchio
+laugh, whom the charge of the prisoners had made as serious as a
+judge.
+
+"Listen, youngster, don't bother yourself with these two scoundrels
+whose throats I'll cut some day with my kitchen knife as if they were
+pigs, and so you will be freed from the care of them, and I win back
+the honor which I lose in feeding the enemies of my country."
+
+"Are you crazy?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Didn't you hear what my captain said? We must make them sing."
+
+"Them sing? It's easier to make the statue of Marcus Aurelius sing
+that's of bronze and won't move from the Capitol for fear the
+Councilors of the Commune might take it to a pawnbroker's."
+
+"But I've found out already what their names are."
+
+"I, too."
+
+"Let's hear."
+
+"Pigs."
+
+"That is their family name, but the real name of the Croat is Stolz
+and the Hungarian's is Franz."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"We've got to find out how many of them are down there in the
+trenches; if there are others behind them; how many pieces of
+artillery they have and where; from what point their munitions and
+supplies come, and how many officers are in command of the troops."
+
+"That's the easiest thing possible."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"You ask them and they will answer."
+
+"And if they pretend not to hear?"
+
+"Leave it to me, youngster. I have a special way of making myself
+understood, even by the deaf. I didn't read for nothing _The Spanish
+Inquisition_. Bring to me here those two satellites of Franz Joe and
+you'll hear the speeches I'll make them."
+
+Ciampanella rubbed his ears, tied an apron around his waist as when he
+entered upon his official functions, filled up the little stove with
+charcoal and lighted a fine fire. When Pinocchio returned to the
+kitchen, followed by the prisoners, a pair of tongs and a shovel were
+heating on the red-hot charcoal.
+
+At the sight of these the Croat and the Hungarian exchanged glances
+and a few quick, dry phrases in their language.
+
+Ciampanella advanced triumphantly to within a foot of them, bowed like
+an actor to an applauding audience, and unfolded one of his most
+polished discourses:
+
+"Gentlemen, our officers say that we must respect the enemy, and I
+respect you according to command; but in case any one should persist
+in refusing to speak, just like the beasts, I should feel it my duty
+to treat him like a beast, and my superiors would say to me,
+'Ciampanella, you're right.' I explain this because we have need of
+certain information, so we take the liberty of asking you in secret
+certain things which you, gentlemen, can answer, after which we will
+give you special attention in our culinary service. This is said and
+promised, so I begin my questions. We want to know how many men and
+how many officers that big simpleton of your emperor has whipped up
+together against us."
+
+No answer.
+
+"What? Are you deaf? Don't you understand modern Italian? Then I'll
+talk ancient Roman to you."
+
+Ciampanella grabbed from the stove the red-hot shovel and waved it
+before the Austrians' noses. Their eyes popped out with fright, but
+they didn't utter a word.
+
+"You will either answer or I will give you two kisses with the shovel
+on your right cheeks and two on your left."
+
+"'Talian pigs! Brigands!"
+
+"May you be skinned alive! To call me a brigand! Me! Pinocchio, which
+creature is this, Spitz or Spotz?"
+
+"Franz."
+
+"Listen, Franz, if you dare insult me another time, I'll untie your
+hands and then I'll give you so many boxes on your ear that'll make
+you more of an imbecile than your emperor."
+
+"You kill us, we die mouths shut."
+
+"We, we ... Wait before you talk in the plural; wait till I put this
+red-hot shovel to Stolz's ear, and then ..."
+
+Ciampanella came closer to the Croat, armed with his other heated
+iron, but suddenly he felt a blow on his eye which half blinded him.
+
+"... they can ..."
+
+He couldn't finish because Pinocchio burst out laughing so wildly that
+he had to hold his stomach. Ciampanella, who had been taken unaware by
+the glass of water Pinocchio had thrown at him, let out all his anger
+on him.
+
+"Youngster, look out for yourself. I won't stand nonsense from you. I
+owe to our enemies the respect enjoined by regulations, but you I can
+take by the nape of the neck and set you down on the stove, and I'll
+roast you as if you were beef."
+
+Pinocchio became suddenly serious and began to swing his wooden leg so
+nervously that if Major Cutemup had seen him he would have turned as
+yellow as a Chinaman with fear. If the descendant of Romulus and Remus
+had had the slightest idea of the kick which menaced him at this
+moment he would have grown calm as if by magic. But Pinocchio, who had
+seen Franz and Stolz exchange sly glances and a smile full of irony,
+held himself in and, after scratching his head solemnly, approached
+Ciampanella, who was wiping his eye with his apron, and taking hold
+affectionately of his arm, said:
+
+"So you want to roast me on your stove?"
+
+"As I told you."
+
+"Wouldn't it be better to cook something on it for our supper this
+evening?"
+
+"This evening's supper? But you know that this evening I wouldn't
+light the fire if the commander-in-chief came in person to command me
+to. When the company is in action I am free to do what I want, and
+when I am free to do what I want I don't do anything. So if you are
+hungry you'll have to eat bread and compressed meat, and if you don't
+like it you'll have to fast."
+
+"Listen, Ciampanella; you reason like Menenius Agrippa, who was an
+ancient Roman able to make things clearer than modern Romans, but
+sometimes you get tangled up in your premises."
+
+"Listen, youngster, don't insult me, because as sure as Ciampanella is
+my name I will wring your neck like a chicken's."
+
+"But I'm not insulting you."
+
+"Then tell me what kind of things are _premises_; otherwise ..."
+
+"Otherwise you'll take me and make me sit on the stove and roast me,
+won't you? That proves that the fire is lighted and that the charcoal
+is burning for nothing, and so if, for example, the commander-in-chief
+should pay you a visit he would give you a fortnight's imprisonment
+for it, because when the company's in action you are free to do what
+you want, but not in the kitchen, and if you are hungry you must eat
+bread and compressed meat or fast."
+
+"Heh, youngster! I didn't light the stove for culinary purposes, but
+for strategic reasons. It was to make these two beasts talk."
+
+"But they haven't talked."
+
+"We'll fling them out and let the mad dogs eat them."
+
+"But if you, instead of heating the shovel and tongs, had roasted a
+young pullet and served it with one of those famous sauces ..."
+
+"Chicken in the Roman style with potato puffs ..."
+
+"Just look at Stolz. He's licking his greased whiskers as if the
+potatoes were cooking under his nose."
+
+"Look at Franz gaping."
+
+"They have a dog's hunger, and in order to make them sing ..."
+
+"You want me to cook a little supper such as I can cook if I set
+myself to it, stick it under their noses, and ... Youngster, that's a
+magnificent idea! When I write my _Manual of War Cookery_ I'll put you
+on the frontispiece as the first of kitchen strategians. Leave things
+to me and in half an hour I'll hand you out a couple of stews that
+would raise up the dead better even than Garibaldi's Hymn!"
+
+Pinocchio heaved a sigh. He had won such a battle that, if he had
+been a German, would have caused the people to hammer I don't know how
+many nails into his statue. While Ciampanella was bustling about on
+all sides, plucking two young fowls, peeling potatoes, frying lard and
+onions, melting butter in a saucepan, preparing a stew in another,
+Pinocchio was striding up and down the kitchen, long and narrow as a
+corridor, eying stealthily the two prisoners, who were beginning to
+show signs of a growing restlessness. They had been fasting for more
+than twenty-four hours and their last food had been such a mess that
+it might have been requisitioned from the poultry-yard and the stable.
+
+Ciampanella seemed eager to surpass himself. He hovered over his pots
+without paying any attention to Pinocchio, but talking in a loud voice
+as if he wished to impart a lesson in cookery to half the world.
+
+"Listen, youngster, when you want to eat two savory young fowls you
+must cook them in the Roman fashion according to Ciampanella's recipe,
+which, when it is written down, will not have its equal in _Urbis et
+Orbis_. I call it the Roman fashion, but it might also truly be
+called the Ostrogothic fashion ... but that's the way. Take two young
+fowls and cut them into pieces, put a good-sized lump of butter into a
+saucepan and a little onion and fry it a little; dredge the fowls with
+flour, and put them to simmer in the butter; when they are browned put
+in some tomato paste, salt and pepper, and let them cook down, later a
+grain of nutmeg, cover it and let it cook.... Do you smell that odor,
+youngster? And just think how it will taste! You'll lick your napkin
+like that dirty Croat who ... Ho! ho! look at his tongue hanging
+out.... Ho! ho! ho!"
+
+The air was filled with a fragrance so entrancing that it would have
+given an appetite to the mouth of a letter-box; so imagine how the
+miserable two felt, who, after all, were men of flesh and blood and
+had no other defect than of having been born under the Executioner's
+scepter. Stolz with his mouth wide open breathed in the air in deep
+breaths, tasting it hungrily as if he could really taste the odor that
+tickled his nostrils. Ciampanella stepped in front of him, and spouted
+out one of his special speeches, gesticulating with his fork.
+
+"Well, Mr. Croat? How do you think we do it? Franz Joe is worse off
+than the least of our Alpine troops, because we are not reduced to
+gnawing bones like you who make war in order to fish, as the proverb
+says, in troubled waters. What a delicious odor, isn't it? But don't
+stand there with your mouth open or I'll fill it with dish-water.
+Here's some!"
+
+"'Talian pig!" howled Stolz, half strangled with nausea and disgust,
+spitting all around.
+
+"If you call me an Italian pig again, I'll break your head in spite of
+the respect they teach us is due the enemy, because in this world it
+is tit for tat."
+
+"Listen, Ciampanella," Pinocchio interrupted at the right moment, "if
+the chickens are done we could sit down at the table and offer a bite
+to Stolz."
+
+"That's a good idea, youngster."
+
+While the boy was setting the table and the chef was dishing up the
+stew, from the distance came several tremendous rumblings, which
+brought a smile to the faces of the prisoners, who exchanged
+significant glances. The sound came from our six-inch guns that had
+been dragged with such effort to the altitude of nine thousand feet
+and arrived the day before by way of the _filovia_, which were now
+opening fire on the enemy's trenches. If Franz and Stolz had had even
+the faintest suspicion of this they would have changed their
+expressions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dear Ciampanella, as a cook you should be put on the pedestal of a
+monument. This chicken is a masterpiece. If that imbecile of a Stolz,
+instead of standing there like a dog with his tongue hanging out, a
+foot away from the tail of a hare, could give a lick to this
+drumstick, I wager he would desert his emperor and demand Italian
+citizenship."
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"For my part, I'd rather give him the chicken than the citizenship."
+
+"I would as lief have it," Stolz risked saying, passing his tongue
+over his whiskers.
+
+"I guess so."
+
+"And I'll give you not only a drumstick, but half a chicken with gravy
+and a loaf of bread to go with it, if you'll tell me ..."
+
+"We can't talk; don't want to betray our country."
+
+"Dear Stolz, you're a fine fellow, but if you can't talk I can't give
+you anything to eat and we are quits. But I haven't asked you to
+betray either Croatia, or even Hungary, if you are afraid of Franz's
+hearing you."
+
+"Oh, he speaks only Magyar."
+
+"All the better; then you can tell me how many Bohemians, Slovaks,
+Carinthians, Poles, Germans, and Styrians are intrenched on Mount X
+opposite our men.... We'll leave out the Croats, your countrymen ...
+and, moreover, I'll wager five soldi of Victor Emanuel against a crown
+of your emperor that if they were here and smelled this odor they
+wouldn't make such a to-do about it or talk like lawyers. But smell
+this" ... and while he spoke the rascal of a Pinocchio took in both
+his hands the dish with the stew and held it close to Stolz's nose,
+who shut his eyes and heaved a sigh as if he were giving up his soul
+to the god of all the Croats.
+
+"You 'Talian scoundrel, if you give me and Franz all we can eat and
+drink I'll tell you what you want to know."
+
+"May the saints in Paradise reward you! If you sing and sing well,
+look what delicate morsels I'll give you," cried Ciampanella, jumping
+about with delight. He hastened to fill two plates with delicious food
+and two loaves of fresh bread and half of a sharp old sheep's cheese
+which would have brought a dead man to life.
+
+"And now there's nothing more to do except to untie your hands and to
+give you chairs to sit on."
+
+"We have three lines of trenches, fifteen hundred men ... two
+batteries placed on the Donkey's Saddle ... but you have Alpine troops
+and we can't get the better of you. So our colonel had marvelous
+plan--he had huge mine dug and thought to blow up Alpines to bust them
+all up. This morning we attacked on purpose. When Alpines came face to
+us, we go all back to retreat, but they not come to mined spot and
+didn't all bust up. But when Alpines enter first trench which we leave
+... bum! 'Talian pigs all dead and Austrian soldiers shout hurrah for
+emperor. Did you hear little while ago lots of noise? I knows ... I
+knows what it was ... big mine blow up."
+
+"And 'Talian pigs all killed, aren't they?" yelled the enraged
+Ciampanella. "And you think I am going to give you food? Not by a long
+shot. See what game I'm going to play with you. In the mean time pray
+to the god of all the Croats that what you have said may not be true,
+because if, instead of making war as real soldiers do, your side has
+committed such a despicable deed, you two shall pay for it, and as
+truly as my name is Ciampanella, chef of the mess, you'll pay for it
+dearly enough."
+
+And shaking his lion head and jumping up in the air, waving his arms
+about violently, he took up a piece of rope and bound the prisoners
+tightly to a pole which supported the roof of the dugout.
+
+"And now if you can eat these good gifts of God which I leave under
+your nose, you'll do well, I assure you.... Come, Pinocchio, we must
+take this news to the officer commanding our company, because I don't
+believe anything wrong has happened yet."
+
+"And the prisoners?"
+
+"They won't escape, I, Ciampanella, assure you. They are tied up like
+two pork sausages, and, besides, you know what we'll do? When the door
+is shut we'll put up against it one of the bombs that they make which
+go off almost without touching them. I know where some of them are
+hidden away. If they should succeed in loosening the rope and should
+try to get away they'll take a ride in the air. And now we'll wish the
+gentlemen good appetite and be off on our own affairs."
+
+Five minutes later Ciampanella and Pinocchio were running across the
+snow through the dusk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_How Pinocchio Complained Because He Was No Longer a Wooden Puppet_
+
+
+It was no easy matter for Ciampanella and Pinocchio to reach their
+company, which was intrenched about three miles away, on a declivity
+as sharp as a knife-blade, bordered by jagged precipices. They could
+not have held out against artillery up there, but the position was
+well chosen from which to hammer the enemy's first trench that was
+built on a little slope two hundred yards lower down and less than two
+miles away. Farther along there opened up a pass of great strategic
+importance which the Austrians apparently were intending to defend at
+all costs. Yet it had seemed strange to Teschisso that the foe with
+its numerous exits should try to attack his Alpine troops in force,
+all the more that his first line of defense might be considered as
+irretrievably lost. For this reason he had restrained the impulse of
+his brave soldiers to fight and decided to intrench them on the
+difficult slope to await a favorable moment for decisive action. In
+the mean time he had been able to hammer the enemy's position with
+four large pieces of artillery which he had placed on a summit above
+his intrenchment. When Pinocchio related to him how, with the aid of
+the mess-cook, he had made Franz and Stolz sing, and repeated the few
+words which he had heard from their mouths, he had no longer any doubt
+regarding the foe's strange behavior.
+
+"Heavens! Those scoundrels wanted to blow us up! Luckily I was
+prudent, but you'll see what a joke I'll invent to play on those dogs!
+Call Corporal Scotimondo."
+
+The most important duties were usually intrusted to this soldier with
+a face like a cab-driver's, with a large blond beard and full, ruddy
+cheeks, who at first sight looked so good-natured. But he was a man of
+exceptional energy and extraordinary courage. Calm and quiet when
+danger raged, he could inspire in his comrades a boundless
+confidence.
+
+"Corporal, from information received I have learned that we have
+opposite us fifteen hundred men."
+
+"All the better."
+
+"And a mined zone."
+
+"That's not so good, not good at all."
+
+"I have determined to attack the foe from the rear and force him on to
+the mined zone. I shall set off with the whole company, leaving only
+eight men in the trench, which they must hold at all costs and keep up
+a devilish fire to make the enemy think we are all here. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Certainly, certainly."
+
+"You will command the squad."
+
+"Thanks, Captain."
+
+"I will leave you also Pinocchio and Ciampanella, so that there will
+be ten of you. Choose the other eight quickly, because I am going to
+give immediate orders to depart."
+
+"Draghetta, Senzaterra, Pulin, Cattaruzza, and the four Scagnol
+brothers."
+
+"All right! Go and tell them. Remember that I trust you. I am
+attempting a big coup, but if I succeed, Heavens, what a stroke!...
+They'll fly up like birds."
+
+A little later Pinocchio was witness of a marvelous and fantastic
+scene. The narrow trench was alive with a mass of black figures that
+moved noiselessly. The Alpine troops armed themselves with rope and
+hatchets, filled up their canteens, and replenished their
+cartridge-belts, whispering quick, concise sentences, interrupted with
+laughs, quickly smothered as the rattle of an officer's sword was
+heard. All these shadows grouped themselves in the depth of the trench
+against a heap of huge stones and merged into the profound darkness.
+For a time still there was to be heard coming from down below a
+subdued rustle, then a profound silence. Pinocchio was strangely
+affected and was eager to find out what had happened. He ran to the
+end of the trench--there was not a soul there. Where had his Alpine
+troops gone? Had they perhaps been swallowed up by the abyss which
+yawned a few feet away? He was so terrified that he began to yell
+desperately.
+
+"Captain! Captain Teschis ..."
+
+He didn't get the chance to finish; he felt two rough, heavy hands
+grab him by the ears and lift him up three feet from the ground.
+
+"Less racket here. Don't be such an idiot. Don't you know that in the
+trenches you've got to be as quiet as in church, and ... here I'm in
+command, and when I command anything I've got to be obeyed."
+
+"I'll obey," Pinocchio grumbled, keeping back a cry of pain.
+
+Corporal Scotimondo put him down gently on the ground, face to face
+with himself, and then asked, sharply:
+
+"What did you want with Captain Teschisso?"
+
+"I? Nothing."
+
+"Why did you call him, then?"
+
+"I thought perhaps ... something terrible had happened.... He's gone
+... they're all gone."
+
+"Gone? How gone? They haven't disappeared; they've only gone down ..."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"The precipice, and then they'll climb up again on the other side,
+will reach the first trench, will get the better of the enemy and
+drive them on the mined zone. Then we'll see a fine sight. But until
+this minute comes we've got to keep quiet and not make a racket. Do
+you understand? Now go to sleep because you have been mobilized and
+will have to stand sentry also, and, besides, to-morrow there'll be
+things to do. Now march!"
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+Scotimondo emphasized this command with a kick which made Pinocchio
+take the first steps and showed him the direction he was to go. The
+unexpected disappearance of the Alpine troops still seemed miraculous
+in spite of the simple explanation Scotimondo had given him, and
+Pinocchio had a profound respect for everything that smacked of
+magic.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"Yes, gone down," he grumbled to himself while he was nearing the
+other end of the trench. "That's quickly said, but I'd just like to
+know how it is possible for men of skin and bones to do such a thing.
+The precipice is so deep and so steep that if Ciampanella had not
+pulled me by the collar I should never have got here. And how will
+they manage to get down it? Hum! I am almost beginning to believe that
+these Alpine soldiers are in league with the devil. I saw two of them
+yesterday with some kind of shoes a couple of yards long which flew
+over the snow like airplanes. I wanted to ask the mess-cook to explain
+it to me, but from fear he would make fun of me I kept quiet. But from
+now on I must keep my eyes more on those men. If I discover they
+really have any dealings with the devil I'll take myself off on the
+first occasion."
+
+He stumbled and fell face downward into a soft warm mass from which
+came a dull grunt. Overcome with terror, he was about to take flight
+when he felt himself held fast by a leg as firmly as if by a trap.
+
+"I wish you'd get killed. Couldn't you let me sleep a minute? You must
+be either a creditor or that tyrant of a picket officer going his
+rounds.... If you are a creditor come back six months after peace is
+declared, because now I won't pay you a soldo even if I had one. If
+you are the picket officer I tell you that when I have put out the
+fires I have a right to take my ease ... and now let me sleep ... May
+you be ..."
+
+"Oh, Ciampanella, let me go. Don't you recognize me? I am Pinocchio."
+
+"Oh, it's you, youngster, is it? Did you intend to make me sing like
+Spizzete Spazzete? I have nothing to tell you, but if you insist upon
+my singing something for you at all costs, I will sing for you to get
+up off me."
+
+Pinocchio, seeing that the mess-cook was in one of his "moments,"
+thought it prudent to leave him in peace, so he lay down on a heap of
+straw that was close by, intending to go to sleep.
+
+But his sleep didn't last long. About four o'clock in the morning,
+when dawn was peeping over the horizon, he heard a shot that seemed to
+come from a spot not far from the trench.
+
+"Get your guns, boys!" yelled Scotimondo, rushing to a machine-gun,
+while the others, guns in hand, took their places before the
+loopholes. "It was Draghetta who saw the enemy. Boys, I count on you.
+We've got to make a racket, lots of noise as if all the company were
+here, and don't expose yourselves ... let them have a continuous and
+intense fire."
+
+His glance took in Pinocchio, who was gazing at him, his eyes wide
+open with terror, and Ciampanella tranquilly dozing. With a bound he
+caught up a gun and put it into the boy's hands.
+
+"Ho, lad, stop standing there doing nothing or I'll break your neck!
+I'll smash your head before the potato-eaters knock it in."
+
+With another spring he was on top of the cook, who was calmly dreaming
+a culinary dream, and gave him such a kick that he jumped up like a
+jack-in-the-box.
+
+"I hope they'll eat you."
+
+"Ready to fire! Fire! for Heaven's sake!" Scotimondo screamed at him
+and ran to take his post, grumbling, "but why doesn't the sentinel
+come back? What's that scoundrel of a Draghetta doing?"
+
+Ciampanella rubbed his eyes and discovered Pinocchio, who stood there
+turning his gun round and round without having yet discovered what
+exactly it was that he held.
+
+"May the dogs eat you! Instead of standing there fiddling with your
+weapon that you know as much about as I know about training fleas, you
+would do better to give a look at the saucepan that it doesn't burn
+instead of making me get that kick from the corporal."
+
+"But what saucepan? Are you still asleep?"
+
+"Didn't you hear what he yelled at me when he kicked me? 'Fire!
+Fire!'"
+
+"Certainly, but he meant the fire of the battery, not that of the
+stove. Don't you know that we are expecting an attack?"
+
+"Who says so? There's no need to wait for it. You can wait if you want
+to, but I'm off. I don't know anything about war and don't know how to
+shoot. When there are necks to wring or beasts to butcher I'm ready,
+because they are hens or lambs or such like beasts, but Christians I
+_can't_, and toward the enemy I have the respect ordered by our
+superiors. Listen, youngster, if two bullets hit me in the rear I'll
+take them and won't protest, but I don't stay here at the front unless
+they tie me."
+
+He was just getting away when Scotimondo, who had an eye on him,
+turned hurriedly and poked a revolver at his back.
+
+"Oh, very well! There are certain arguments you can't dispute. I'll
+remain, but I'll find me a hole where I can be safe, because if I die
+the _Manual of War Cookery_ won't be written," and he threw himself
+down on a big stone, signaling to the "youngster" to follow him.
+
+A voice outside was calling for help, only a few feet away from the
+trench.
+
+"Stay where you are, all of you. I'll go," commanded Scotimondo, and,
+wriggling like a serpent, with his revolver in his hand, he set off
+and was lost in the darkness. Shortly after he returned, dragging in
+Draghetta.
+
+"What's the matter? Are you wounded?"
+
+"No, not exactly wounded, but I can't stand up. I'm afraid my feet are
+frozen."
+
+"Let's have a look," and he made him sit down and began to free him
+from his woolen puttees, his hobnailed boots, his waterproof
+stockings, and to rub his red, swollen feet with snow, all the time
+continuing to question him.
+
+"Was it you who fired that shot?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is the enemy in sight?"
+
+"They tried to leave their trenches--two little groups--one of their
+usual nasty little ways to draw us out, and as my superiors did not
+see them, I thought it my duty to give the alarm signal."
+
+"You were right."
+
+"But I wasn't able to get back because my legs gave way, so I had to
+try to crawl on my hands and knees until I had only breath enough left
+to call for help, certain and sure that ..."
+
+"Heavens! Swine!" Scotimondo swore and stopped rubbing.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing; take your place at the machine-gun; I'll take mine
+in the trench."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You have need of rest," and he went off, growling, "poor Draghetta!
+He tried to warn the rest of us and couldn't get away himself."
+
+He again left the trench to reconnoiter. Half an hour later he
+returned, assembled his men, and told them that the foe had retreated
+to their trenches, but that as soon as it was lighter they would have
+to make themselves heard, so as to keep the enemy from attempting an
+attack, which would undoubtedly be fatal to the little garrison. They
+would have to make a lot of noise, but must not waste ammunition,
+because when Captain Teschisso's company came into action they would
+probably have to support it.
+
+"And I impress upon you the importance of not exposing yourselves.
+_The first who does so I'll send to the devil myself._ I have need of
+every one of you, and it's too much that out of ten one should be
+without feet, one a cook, and _one who isn't even a man_."
+
+"Did you hear that, youngster?" Ciampanella asked Pinocchio, when the
+laugh which followed Scotimondo's words had died down. "Did you hear?
+They want to send you to the firing-line. What do you think of that?"
+
+But Pinocchio didn't reply. His wooden leg just then seemed to have
+nervous twinges and rattled like a rusty key in a lock. The sun had
+scarcely begun to rise above the horizon and the snow to glisten in
+its rays when from the trench cut out of the slope narrow as a
+knife-blade came a sound of firing that was truly infernal. The
+machine-gun was smoking, but poor Draghetta didn't let it rest a
+minute. The others kept up a tremendous fire and an accurate one,
+because they could see that the parapet of the enemy's trench was
+marked by little red clouds. Every now and then above the crackle of
+the musketry resounded the humming of larger projectiles that had
+their own special tone. The Austrian commanders were evidently laying
+plans for the whole day because there was not even the shadow of an
+enemy to be seen. They contented themselves with replying with an
+occasional shell. But what would they have done if they had known that
+opposite them were only seven men, and one of them disabled, and that
+the formidable _ta-pum, ta-pum, ta-pum_ which rose above the whine of
+the musketry came from--the _mouths_ of Pinocchio and Ciampanella?
+
+The coming of the twilight cast a veil of melancholy over the little
+garrison, wearied by the fatigues imposed by its continual vigilance
+and the continual answer to the firing of the foe.
+
+They were all expecting every moment to see Captain Teschisso's
+company come into action, the Austrians swept from their trenches with
+the bayonets at their backs and thrown on the mined zone where they
+would all be blown up. Yet nothing of the sort was taking place. The
+enemy had never appeared more quiet and as sure of himself as to-day.
+What had happened to the company? It wasn't possible that it had been
+captured by superior forces. The Alpine troops would have fought like
+lions; the noise of their battle would have reached the trench, and
+some one would certainly have returned to bring the news of the
+disaster. It was more likely that Captain Teschisso, knowing that he
+would have to engage a superior force, had decided to attack at night.
+The surprise and the impossibility of judging the number of the
+assaulting force would certainly keep the enemy from resisting. But
+Corporal Scotimondo was not altogether satisfied with his captain's
+tactics.
+
+"I'm not a Napoleon," he grumbled, in his patois, striding with long
+steps through the narrow passageway of the trenches, every now and
+then making a right-about face. "I'm not a Napoleon. It's easy to say
+'hold fast at all costs,' but in order to hold fast you have to have
+men. My men are not made of iron; I am not made of iron; they need
+rest and yet even to let them rest I can't allow the trench to be
+without sentinels all night. If I change sentries every half-hour,
+nobody sleeps; if I make them stay at the posts for two hours
+according to regulations, they'll come back to me with their feet
+frozen like Draghetta, and then we couldn't hold fast. Plague take it!
+This is certainly a situation to upset a corporal. If ..."
+
+He stopped suddenly because Pinocchio barred his way. He looked at him
+for a minute in amazement, gestured with his head for him to move to
+one side, but, seeing that he stood there as firmly as if he had taken
+root, he grunted, I don't know whether with anger or surprise.
+
+"Skip, boy, skip. Don't you understand anything? Don't you understand
+I want you to get from under my feet?"
+
+"Just a question, corporal."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You need a sentinel for to-night."
+
+"Yes, a new one every half-hour."
+
+"I have come to volunteer."
+
+"Why not? I like the idea ... you, too, will take your half-hour's
+turn, but this doesn't help me solve my problem of ..."
+
+"But I have come to volunteer for the whole night."
+
+"Really? Are you in earnest?"
+
+"Yes, indeed. You see, Corporal Squassamondo, I should have liked to
+remind you this morning early that I have a wooden leg, but I prefer
+to tell you now. Wood doesn't freeze and so I can stand guard for ten
+hours even without any danger, if you only give me enough to cover
+myself with and plenty to eat."
+
+"And the other leg?"
+
+"Ciampanella has told me that storks sleep all night standing on one
+leg and don't fall over. I am a man 'that's not a man,' but if I were
+no more good than a stork I shouldn't have got a wooden leg on the
+battle-field."
+
+The little lesson had sunk in and Scotimondo felt it like a pinch on
+the shins. He tried to be furious, but didn't succeed. He let out a
+terrible "Good Heavens!" then was overcome with emotion, caught
+Pinocchio in his arms, pressed him to himself, and kissed him again
+and again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a night blacker than a German conscience. Two shadows glided
+over the snow and stopped in the shelter of a rock which dominated all
+the narrow slope, the enemy's trenches, the awful mass of peaks and
+jagged ridges. At the side of the adversary's position the snow was
+marked with an enormous black streak which was lost in the depth of
+the mountains. It was the abyss, a frightful wedge-shaped crack which
+looked like an enormous interrogation point drawn with charcoal on an
+immense white sheet.
+
+"You feel all right?"
+
+"Fine as possible."
+
+"Did they give you a good supper?"
+
+"I'm so full that I can't draw a long breath with all this stuff I've
+got on me. I certainly sha'n't feel cold."
+
+"In your right pocket you'll find a thermos bottle of hot coffee; in
+the other, chocolate."
+
+"Splendid."
+
+"Do you want a gun?"
+
+"What should I do with it? In case of alarm I'll keep sounding
+'_ta-pum_' like this morning."
+
+"Then you understand. You must keep a lookout down there all the time,
+there where the white of the snow meets the black of the sky. If you
+see anything white on black or black on white which moves give the
+alarm; if not, keep still. Take good care not to fall asleep, because
+if I should go the rounds and find you asleep I should be compelled to
+kill you at your post."
+
+"In that case wake me up ... five minutes beforehand."
+
+"Well, I'm off."
+
+"Good luck."
+
+"I want to impress it on you--no racket now."
+
+"Good-by, Scrollamondo. Don't worry."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pinocchio had the courage of a lion that night, and if the Austrians
+had attempted an attack he would have felt equal to them all by
+himself. As soon as he was alone he took out from the pockets of his
+cloak, so full of food that they seemed a military depot, a thin rope
+a couple of yards long, knotted one end of it, stuck his head through,
+bending his good leg, put his foot on the rope, which he swung in
+front of him at the height of his knee, and, leaning against the rock,
+stood there still, resting on his wooden leg.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"And now I am ready," he muttered, contentedly; "now let them come on.
+I'm not afraid of any one, not even of the snow. There's no denying
+it--my idea was magnificent. If that simpleton Toni Salandra had had
+one as good he would have saved the Ministry. Two feet of rope and the
+trench is saved. With two soldi's worth of soap he could have saved
+the finest Parliament our poor country has ever seen.... It's queer
+that I haven't the slightest sensation of fear.... It's dark, but I
+seem to see as well as by day. It must be that a sentinel's duty
+clears the sight. I could swear that I could see a flea a mile away.
+Besides, my duty is simple: I am to stay here and do nothing; I am not
+to get my feet frozen, and as far as that is concerned there's no
+danger; and I am to look out for white moving on black or black on
+white. Then, _ta-pum_, _ta-pum_, _ta-pum_, like this morning, then
+throw myself on the ground and creep back to the trench like a
+cat.... What a fire we kept up this morning, I and Ciampanella! He
+fired so often and so vigorously that he ended by falling over with
+fright.... If he hadn't had to sleep off his fatigue I couldn't have
+done the fine deed I'm doing. I am sure he wouldn't have let me get
+cold like this ... because ... I didn't feel it at first, but now I
+feel chills creeping up my spine!"
+
+When Pinocchio stuck his hand into his pocket it touched the rounded
+form of the thermos bottle. He took it out, put it to his lips, and
+drank a mouthful. Five minutes later the boy felt the heat mounting to
+his brain as if he were at the mouth of a furnace.
+
+"Ah-ha! That's good! When I am a general like Win-the-War I'll heat
+the railway compartment with coffee instead of with a radiator. I wish
+they'd 'murder' the garments I got on, as Ciampanella says: When I
+think that he made me run the risk of having eight bullets in my
+stomach I don't know what to do. But before I would have him burned
+up, it would be nice to sleep here under this upholstered seat, with
+the lullaby of the train that sounds as if my nurse were singing it.
+If he found me now I should like to drop into one of those dozes from
+which even Ciampanella's _ta-pum_ wouldn't wake me.... If I go to
+sleep I'll be cold. That tyrant of a Scotimondo would just as lief
+wake me up with a revolver at my head.... I'd like to know what's the
+fun of keeping a poor sentinel out in the cold where there's nothing
+to watch, because I bet a soldo against a lira that the Austrians are
+sleeping soundly to-night--I seem to hear them snoring like so many
+suckling pigs.... No, I said I wouldn't go to sleep, and to keep my
+word I won't go to sleep, but I can allow myself a nod, just a little
+nod. There's no black on white, or white on black; it seems to me to
+be getting more cloudy ... so that ... Scotimondo? But what is it? I
+am no Napoleon ... he said it. But even Napoleon when he found a
+sleeping sentinel took his gun and waited till he waked up. He would
+do the same ... with the difference that I haven't any gun ... so that
+... not so much noise ... Scotimon ...? but where is Scotmona ...
+Scoti ... mon ... do..."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just at this moment the snow began to fall gently, so gently, and as
+dry as flour just from the mill. The corporal, who was about to set
+out on his usual tour of inspection, glanced at the sky, then growled,
+as he rubbed his hands: "The Austrians won't come out in such weather.
+It will be a foot thick in less than an hour. I'll go and sleep,
+myself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+Pinocchio woke up with a start. It was dawn!... He found himself
+buried in the snow up to his chest. He looked about and could no
+longer see the enemy's trench; he looked behind him and couldn't
+recognize the Italian post. What under the heavens had happened? He
+was on the point of becoming despondent and ready to give the alarm
+when on the side of the enemy's position in the wide wedge-sloped
+cleft, which looked like an exclamation point drawn with charcoal on
+an immense white sheet, he thought he saw a curious movement like many
+ants. He fixed his eyes on it, and while his heart beat so loudly that
+he thought he would suffocate, he concentrated all his attention, all
+his mind, on the point there below. He saw the jagged rock swarming
+with Alpine troops, saw little clusters of men suspended over the
+abyss, and ropes hanging in space slowly lifting up soldiers; and at
+the sight of this miracle of daring and dexterity he naturally forgot
+the fear of his wakening. Anxiously he followed the maneuvers of these
+brave sons of Italy, saw them suddenly disappear.... Then a cry of
+terror rose from the enemy's trench, a rattle of guns and almost at
+the same moment two or three hundred Austrians were in flight and
+flinging themselves on the slope, pursued by a steady fire. It was
+time to give the alarm. Pinocchio wanted to let out one of his
+extraordinary _ta-pums_, but just then a terrible explosion shook the
+earth and clouded the sky.... A horrible yell, a cry from hundreds of
+throats struck him to the marrow ... then there was silence.
+
+Captain Teschisso, returning victorious from his expedition, found
+Pinocchio there, and tenderly gave him first aid, but, seeing that he
+didn't come to, he intrusted him to four soldiers, saying:
+
+"Take him to the first ambulance, with Draghetta and the other
+wounded, and tell the surgeon to care for him as my best friend. Poor
+youngster, who will have to have another wooden leg! But we have
+avenged him and given those dogs what they deserved. Heavens, what a
+fight!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_Many Deeds and Few Words_
+
+
+My dear little friends, I won't stop to show you Pinocchio in the sad
+surroundings of a hospital. I will tell you only that he stayed there
+for more than two months, and that he left it with his two wooden
+legs, new and well oiled, and that Fatina, by a curious coincidence,
+was his careful and affectionate nurse, and that Ciampanella, playing
+the part of a good friend, did not fail to make him frequent visits,
+bringing with him certain samples of camp cookery which enraptured
+Pinocchio. His surgeon was a most polite Piedmontese, always bowing
+and salaaming, who announced to him with all formality the misfortune
+which had again overtaken him and asked his permission two days in
+advance to amputate his frozen leg.
+
+"All right," exclaimed Pinocchio, "go ahead. I've got accustomed to
+such trifles now. But you must do me a favor."
+
+"Let me hear it."
+
+"When you give me my new wooden leg I want it to be longer than usual
+and that naturally you change the other one, too."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I'd feel as if I were on stilts and it would amuse me to
+death to take steps longer than any one else."
+
+He was satisfied and left the hospital with such long legs that he was
+almost as tall as Ciampanella, who took Pinocchio's arm in his as if
+he were his sweetheart.
+
+"Heh, youngster, but you have grown! And then they say that we
+non-combatants never do anything! I haven't done anything, but if I
+were the one I have in mind I would bestow on you the medal for
+bravery because your legs have won it. I tell you, I, who know what I
+am talking about."
+
+"Even if they don't give me anything, I am satisfied all the same. All
+I ask is for them to leave me here and not send me home."
+
+"Come with me and I'll appoint you first adjutant of the mess kitchen,
+and when I have taught you how and put the ladle in your hand _we
+will live on the fat of the land_ and will make meat-balls with our
+leavings for the general, and when we don't know what else to do we'll
+write the _Manual of War Cookery_, which I won't risk now because I
+haven't a writing hand, as the saying is."
+
+"Listen, Ciampanella, I am as grateful as if you had offered to lend
+me a hundred lire without interest, but just now I can't accept."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because it requires a special constitution to be a cook. I'd be all
+right as far as eating the best morsels was concerned, but it would be
+dangerous for me to stay near the stove. I am half wooden and run the
+risk of catching on fire. I should have to decide to take out
+insurance against fire. Moreover, let's consider. To-day I have other
+views. Fatina here has given me a letter for my friend Bersaglierino,
+who is at headquarters as the war correspondent of an important
+newspaper. We'll see what he advises me to do."
+
+They parted good friends after a solemn feast which almost made
+Ciampanella roll under the table, like an ancient Roman at one of the
+banquets of Lucullus or Nero.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+Bersaglierino was truly delighted to see his dear little friend again
+and kept him with him several days for company. From him he learned a
+number of things he didn't know. One day he asked him:
+
+"Tell me, Pinocchio, do you know the reason for this war in which you,
+too, have played your small part and to which you have paid tribute of
+part of yourself?"
+
+"Do you imagine I don't know? It is _to make Italy bigger_."
+
+"And that seems a just reason to you?"
+
+"That's what every one says."
+
+"All those who don't know what they are talking about. If every nation
+had the right to let loose a war for the sole purpose of enlarging her
+boundaries we'd have to take off our hats to the Germans who provoked
+the present curse for their own purposes. We have other and nobler
+ideals. We have brothers to liberate, peoples to free from a foreign
+yoke. Certain lands which are ours because they were enriched by the
+labors of our fathers, because our Italian tongue is spoken in them,
+were until to-day exploited by the enemy, who sought in every way to
+embitter the existence of our brothers, paying with contempt and
+scorn, with persecution and oppression, their loyalty and love for the
+mother-country. Italian unity, begun in the revolutionary movement of
+1811, was not completed in 1870 with the taking of Rome. The jealousy
+of other nations halted us on our way to emancipation. We were too
+weak then to make our will felt; we were exhausted with fifty years of
+continuous fighting and we had need of a little rest in order to
+restore our energy. To-day we are strong enough to stand up for our
+rights. Neither underhand dealings of wicked men nor betrayal by
+partizans will prevent the victory of our arms. Italy will be
+retempered in the war. Our destiny will be fulfilled.
+
+"I see as in a dream our borders which have been overrun won back to
+us, Trent bleeding with Italian blood, Goriza twice redeemed, Trieste
+in the shadow of the tricolor. Istria awaits us impatiently; Parenzo
+is preparing the way for us to Pola, which we shall take intact, with
+the defenses the Austrians erected there against our own brothers.
+Zara, Sebenico, and the coast of Dalmatia, which for so many centuries
+displayed the glorious insignia of the Lion of St. Mark, are longing
+impatiently for the moment which shall reunite them to the
+mother-country, that for them and with them will grow ever greater.
+War is a curse; this one which is being fought to-day all over the
+civilized world is perhaps the most terrible which humanity has ever
+known; yet it will not fail to bring great blessings. It has awakened
+the consciences of peoples and revealed the virtues and the defects of
+particular races. In the contest of the ancient Latin civilization
+with the Teuton power the might of right has been re-established, the
+right that has been trampled upon by force...."
+
+And so on and so on, for when Bersaglierino began to argue there was
+no way of stopping him, and Pinocchio stood there listening with his
+mouth open like a peasant absorbed by the wonderful discourse of a
+fakir at a fair. And who knows how long he would have stood there, but
+Bersaglierino had so much to do and was obliged to leave him alone,
+letting him stay in the rear where he could follow the progress of the
+war without exposing himself too much, but where he could still be
+doing important service for his country. He put him in the care of a
+captain of the commissary department, a good friend of his who had the
+unlucky idea of making him a baker in a camp bakery. He stayed there
+only two days, astounded at the enormous quantity of bread which was
+kneaded and baked all the time. All he did was to give a hand in
+filling the baskets which were loaded on automobiles that carried the
+bread to the front. The third day he made a figure of dough that
+looked like the twin brother of the captain, put it in the oven and,
+when it was baked, set it astraddle on the cup of coffee poured out
+for that officer, then hid himself behind a curtain to take part in
+the welcome which would certainly be given to his most valuable work
+of art. But the commissary officer's orderly found him and wanted to
+dust his trousers and pull his ears. He never succeeded in doing this.
+Pinocchio helped him out of the house with kicks and then hurled him
+into the flour-barrel. If they had not pulled him out in time he would
+have suffocated.
+
+The boy fled on the first automobile which left for the front, and for
+several days whirled back and forth between the front and rear lines,
+going forward on the supply automobiles and returning on the Red Cross
+ambulances which brought the wounded to the first-aid posts. The
+drivers were glad to take him on their machines because he kept them
+all jolly with his pranks, and he, better than any one, was able to
+get an idea of the gigantic and wonderful work which was being done
+side by side with the army which was fighting for the defense of its
+country. What profound respect for discipline, what order, what spirit
+of self-sacrifice in those brave soldiers (almost all fathers of
+families), continually exposed to bad weather, to the hardest
+fatigues, to the most complete privations! Rain, snow, ice, tornadoes
+of wind and of shot and shell, nothing succeeded in interrupting for a
+single minute the interminably long chain of wagons and lorries that
+carried food to the trenches, ammunition to the artillery, and cannon
+to the fortified positions. The drivers, dead with sleep, soaked with
+rain, shivering with cold, remained calmly at their wheels and at the
+heads of their horses. When the great caravan stopped for a moment for
+any reason these men, revived with new energy and by the force of
+their will, started the huge mechanism on its way again.
+
+For a little way Pinocchio thought he would become an
+automobile-driver, but when they told him that he would have to have a
+license and that, in order to get one, he would have to take a regular
+examination, he didn't proceed farther. Examiners he looked upon as
+even greater enemies than Franz Joe's hunters.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+After pondering the subject a long time he decided to become a
+military postman. At first he took pleasure in it all. When he
+arrived it seemed as if heaven had come down to earth. He was received
+like a king, with joyous cries and shouts, and he walked between two
+rows of soldiers like a general. When he distributed the letters it
+was as if he conferred a favor; when he handed out a money-order he
+had an air of condescension as if he were doling the soldi from his
+purse. When he had finished distributing the mail he would let them
+pay him to read their letters. I can tell you it was not an easy
+matter. Often he had hieroglyphics to decipher which would have given
+trouble to a professor of paleontology. But Pinocchio had such a quick
+mind that when he found he couldn't puzzle it out he invented a letter
+and did it so well that he earned a soldo by it and the deep gratitude
+of his clients. What disgusted him with the business was the postal
+service, which suddenly became confoundedly bad, perhaps on account of
+a change in the Ministry. Pinocchio saw his popularity vanish in an
+instant, and the soldiers made him bear the brunt of their
+dissatisfaction. One day he heard so many complaints that he grew
+furious and flung away the bag he wore about his neck and cried out to
+those who were disputing around him:
+
+"You are a bunch of imbeciles. Why do you come to me with your
+letters? Do you know what you ought to do? Go and get them, because I
+won't take another step for the sake of your pretty faces."
+
+His ears were boxed again and again and he replied with as many kicks,
+but he didn't play postman any more. He was wondering to what new
+service he could dedicate himself when a corporal baker gave him this
+note:
+
+     DEAR PINOCCHIO,--I am having the one who will hand you this
+     write these lines so that he can tell you for me that I have
+     a great longing to see you, because I am not well and I
+     don't know what to do, and I sign myself your most
+     affectionate
+
+     CIAMPANELLA,
+
+     _Chief Mess-cook in the service of the
+     Commander-in-chief_.
+
+Pinocchio was so affected by this letter that he set off at once in
+search of his friend. He found him in full performance of his noble
+functions, white, red, and flourishing as if he had come back the day
+before from taking the cure at Montecatini.
+
+"Well?" he said in astonishment, after they had embraced.
+
+"Well, youngster, I am here and I am not here in this beastly world."
+
+"But, truly ..."
+
+"You wouldn't say that I am on the downward path, to make use of the
+words of the chaplain, but Ciampanella is no longer himself. They have
+given me only a few months more to live. I don't mind for myself, you
+know. I think that I shall be as well off there as I have been
+here.... But I am thinking of humanity."
+
+"Nothing and a little less than nothing."
+
+"No joking now, youngster. Without the _Manual of War Cookery_ written
+by Ciampanella humanity can never be happy, because with it men will
+eat and laugh, and when you laugh you spend willingly, and when you
+spend willingly you eat well.... So that ..."
+
+"Why don't you write it?"
+
+"First of all, because I lack the knowledge of handwriting, which
+you've got to do; that is why I sent for you, and then ... because I
+am afraid that I won't have time enough to dictate it all, because the
+surgeon-major who examined me said that I had a disease of the liver
+from eating too much, and that it would be the liver that would bring
+me to my grave if I didn't stop immediately living on the fat of the
+land and drink quantities of water. Listen, youngster, I have always
+had a great antipathy for liver, so much so that I never even put it
+in patties called Strasburg and which in my _Manual_ I will rechristen
+'Austro-German Trenches with Reinforcements of War Bread and Ambushed
+in Jelly.' But that's not the point. As I tell you, I have always had
+a great antipathy to liver, but also for water, so much so, I'll tell
+you in confidence, that sometimes I don't even use it to wash my face
+in.
+
+"So listen. Since they have brought me to this crossroads--either
+drink water and live or eat good things and let my liver take me to
+the next world--I have decided on the latter. Before dying I wanted to
+call you to my presence to tell you that as I have no one in the world
+I have been thinking of leaving you everything I possess: ten ladles,
+a carver, the change-purse, and the recipes for the _Manual_, for
+which, when you publish it, they will give you at least the cross of a
+knight, that when you put it on will make, you feel 'way and ahead of
+those who look at you."
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+In short, Ciampanella said so much and did so much that he persuaded
+Pinocchio to stay with him. And certainly the boy could not find a
+better way of making himself useful to his country. The mess-cook was
+at the orders of a division. Each day he satisfied the hunger of four
+generals, six colonels, and a crowd of majors and captains of the
+General Staff. All these were men who had need of good eating that
+wouldn't cause indigestion. Pinocchio served ... as director of the
+mess. When he saw some saucepan boiling over, a pot too full, he
+quickly reduced them by tasting their contents generously. Sauces and
+ragoûts were his passion. Every now and then you might have seen him
+dipping half a loaf of bread into the casseroles. One day a captain
+who was inspecting surprised him at this, and naturally he lit into
+Ciampanella about it, who threatened to quit the kitchen if they
+didn't leave him in peace.
+
+"Do you understand, Mr. Captain? Do you imagine that standing over a
+fire is a great pleasure? I am beginning to believe that it is better
+to stay in the trenches and die _with a ball in the head_ than in the
+rear when you come and ruin my comfort with your inspections. But do
+you know what I'll do? I'll hide the ladles in a place I know of and
+I'll take up a musket and you'll see what you'll see."
+
+The captain had to slink off, speeded by the laughs of Pinocchio,
+whose nose was smeared and greasy and his mouth dripping with tomato
+sauce. Ciampanella, who was so lacking in respect to his superiors,
+obeyed the boy as if he were a head taller than he. Pinocchio had
+persuaded him to drink quarts of water and to take digestive tablets
+after his meals, and every morning a spoonful of salts in a glass of
+water as the surgeon-major had ordered. And he followed out this
+prescription so carefully that he had noticed a wonderful improvement,
+and he kept a big bottle full of medicine among his cans of pepper and
+spices. This fact had several times started an idea in Pinocchio's
+whimsical pate, and several times he had been on the point of
+exchanging this medicine for the kitchen salt, but the thought of the
+serious consequences which might result had kept him from doing it.
+Moreover, Pinocchio was called more and more often to serve the
+mess-table and spent less time in the kitchen. The famous captain of
+the inspection had thought in this way to avenge himself upon that
+most insolent of semi-puppets, but, to tell you the truth, he didn't
+find it bad. Serving at table so many grand generals seemed to him
+almost an honor, and he was proud of it. When he handed the dishes to
+the highest officers he would make low bows; the captains he treated
+almost with disdain. He always tried to serve his "particular" captain
+the last, and when there was left in the dish scarcely enough to
+scrape out another portion he would whisper in his ear:
+
+"Heh, Captain, blessed are those that are last!"
+
+The captain fumed, but waited for the moment when he could give him a
+reprimand. He thought the time had come one morning when he found a
+fly in the stew.
+
+"Come here, you little beast."
+
+"Yes, sir; at your orders, sir."
+
+"Look!" and he stuck the plate of stew two inches from his nose.
+
+"There is no doubt, Captain, that it is a fly, a very vulgar fly," and
+sticking two fingers delicately into the sauce he pulled the insect
+out ... "a fly indeed! But you may consider yourself lucky because in
+the rations of your men there will be at least twenty of them. And
+those who fight don't think much of it. You do the same, Captain ...
+in war-time don't bother about such trifles."
+
+A tank commander who was next to him laughed heartily. The captain, as
+green as a newly formed tomato, kept quiet and ate the stew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That day there was a grand dinner for some French and British officers
+who had come on a mission to the front. Ciampanella had cooked one of
+his wonderful recipes. Pinocchio, who had stuck his nose and tongue
+into all the pots and pans, swore that even the King's cook was not
+equal to producing such a dinner. And he, too, wished to do himself
+honor. He set the table in a grassy spot surrounded by high trees and
+thick hedges. It wasn't possible to find a more picturesque spot,
+shady and safe from curious eyes, from reporters, and--spies. It was a
+little distance from the kitchen, but distances didn't bother
+Pinocchio, whose legs, longer than ordinary ones, could take steps
+like a giant's. He decorated the table with wild flowers and wove
+between the branches of the trees the flags of Italy, France, England,
+and America, tied together with the colors of Belgium, dressed himself
+afresh, and prepared to display all his good manners.
+
+All the high officers seated at the table made a wonderful sight. The
+uniforms, starred with crosses and ribbons, shining with gold and
+silver, were all the more sparkling against the green background of
+the trees and the meadow.
+
+Pinocchio had served the finest _consommé_ with the air of a head
+waiter in an expensive restaurant. When he returned to serve a
+magnificent capon in jelly shaped like a cannon surrounded by hearts
+of green lettuce which appeared on the menu under the name "William's
+Wishes, with Evasions of German Financiers," he was struck by a
+strange sight. All the diners had fled from the table and were going
+hurriedly behind the hedge, overcome with nausea. A terrible idea
+flashed through Pinocchio's mind. He turned around and, his capon in
+his hand, rushed to the kitchen.
+
+"Ciampanella! Ciampanella!"
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"The medicine?"
+
+"What's the medicine got to do with dinner?"
+
+"What did you put in the soup?"
+
+"Are you crazy, youngster? Be quiet and let the officers eat."
+
+"Ciampanella, are you perfectly sure of yourself?"
+
+"Why do you ask me if I am sure of myself?"
+
+"Because ... the officers aren't eating."
+
+"What are they doing?"
+
+"Just come and see, because I don't understand about cooking."
+
+They went running, but had scarcely passed the threshold when a bomb
+from an enemy airplane burst a few feet from them. They were hit in
+the chest by a column of air which turned them round, were hurled back
+into the kitchen, and buried beneath a shower of masonry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ciampanella remained buried there, to the great misfortune of
+humanity, who, after all, had to do without his _Manual of War
+Cookery_, but Pinocchio was dug out alive. He was carried hastily to
+the nearest ambulance station and fell into the hands of a splendid
+surgeon, who, after having set a slender fracture of the arm and of
+the breastbone, swore to save him in spite of fate. He hurriedly
+amputated an arm, and a fortnight later in the hospital of a near-by
+city they extracted the broken ribs, for which they substituted two
+silver plates.
+
+When Fatina and the Bersaglierino hurried to his bed to help him and
+cheer him they found themselves face to face with a poor creature who,
+with his artificial legs, arm, and breast, seemed indeed ... a wooden
+puppet.
+
+But Pinocchio was still himself, humorous, lively, and mischievous.
+When he noticed that Fatina was looking at him with her big blue eyes
+full of tears and pity, he shrugged his shoulders and, scratching his
+left ear vigorously, made a face and said:
+
+"Pretty object, heh? But you must be patient. In order to become a
+real boy I couldn't help but go back to ... the old one!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_And Now--Finished or Not Finished_
+
+
+It was a beautiful morning, sparkling with sunshine and glory because
+the tricolor was waving from the windows of every house and the people
+in the streets had joy in their eyes and a smile on their lips. On the
+terrace of a handsome mansion, a terrace of marble decorated with
+exotic plants, at the end of which was a large stained-glass window, a
+man of mature age and military bearing was stretched out in a
+reclining-chair. He was smoking a large meerschaum pipe and blew out
+such puffs of smoke that it seemed as if he were trying to obscure the
+sun. By his side was a soldier awaiting orders, and near by was a
+stand on which a magnificent green parrot stood, scratching his head
+with his claw and rolling his big yellow eyes.
+
+"Heh! What do you say to that, Duretti? Are we or are we not great?
+To-day that we can say we have made Italy?"
+
+     "Now you see
+     Italy
+     The general has made so free ..."
+
+chattered the wretch of a parrot.
+
+"Be quiet, Coccorito; if you keep on with that nonsense I won't give
+you any sunflower seeds for a week. I'd like to know who trained him
+to be so impertinent during my absence. If it were not ..."
+
+General Win-the-War started to get up, but a sudden twinge of pain
+made him cry out and keep still in his chair. After biting his lips
+for five minutes he began again to suck the mouthpiece of his pipe,
+and after smoking up the air for another five minutes he said:
+
+"Heh! My dear Duretti, it is a great satisfaction to fight for the
+greatness of one's country, and if it were not for that cursed
+Austrian shot which broke my leg I should like ..."
+
+But Coccorito wouldn't let him finish and began to sing in his
+horrible voice:
+
+     "Every day,
+     Pé--pé--pé,
+     When he grew great,
+     The soldiers he ate,
+       Ho, ho, ho!
+
+     He broke his leg,
+     Or so he said,
+     'Tis gout, you know,
+     Won't let him go ..."
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+The general groaned and threw with all the strength he had left his
+big meerschaum pipe at the bird. Coccorito would have come to a sad
+end if the god of parrots had not, as he always did, held his
+protecting hand over his tuft. The pipe grazed his head and fell in
+the street, while he, with a strong tug at his light brass chain, flew
+off and perched himself on the window-sill of the floor above, where
+he laughed loudly and cried:
+
+     "Ha, ha, ha!
+     The general to the front set out,
+       Felt a blow and down he fell,
+     Because he suffers from the gout.
+       He says his leg he broke--well, well--
+     For his King, for Italy
+     He broke his leg--he, he, he, he!"
+
+But Coccorito could now sing in peace and be as insolent as he liked
+because the general was no longer paying any attention to him, for two
+excellent reasons. First, because, in spite of his high rank, he was
+not great enough to reach up to the second-floor window; second, and
+more important, because at the moment that his pipe fell in the street
+a carriage stopped in front of the house and out of it got a
+gentleman, a lady, and ... a small box they were carrying, and it was
+against this box that the strange projectile fell, making such a
+clatter that the lady couldn't help uttering a few words of protest.
+Win-the-War, who never allowed any one to outdo him in courtesy, found
+it necessary to explain matters, and with the help of his orderly got
+up from his chair and dragged himself to the railing of the terrace.
+
+"Pardon me, I beg you.... You are right to protest, but my pipe ...
+fell.... I threw it.... In short, it is all the fault of my parrot,
+who upset me and the pipe. Coccorito, show them at least ... so that
+the lady and gentleman may not believe ..."
+
+"But don't imagine such a thing, General. Don't bother yourself ... it
+is no matter."
+
+     "Ha, ha, ha!
+     The general to the front set out,
+       Felt a blow and down he fell,
+     Because he suffers from the gout.
+       He says his leg he broke--well, well--
+     For his King, for Italy
+     He broke his leg--he, he, he, he!"
+
+Coccorito began again.
+
+"Oh, you wretch! Did you hear him?"
+
+"Don't apologize, General. I beg your pardon. Does old Geppetto live
+here?"
+
+"Yes, sir, on the floor above. Ring the second bell."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"Not at all."
+
+Old Geppetto was getting ready to mend an old table the legs of which
+were red with worm-holes and had in hand a piece of seasoned wood, a
+splendid piece. He was going to cut it with a hatchet and he had
+lifted up his hand holding the shining tool, when who knows what queer
+thoughts made his arm fall heavily. Did he perhaps remember that other
+famous piece of wood from which the sprightly little old man had
+shaped the wonderful puppet which had brought him so much bother and
+trouble? And what had become of him? Why had he sent no news of
+himself since he had gone out into the world like a real boy? Perhaps
+the poor little old man would have preferred to have him still at his
+side, a puppet as he used to be, and of wood out of which he had made
+him, than to be left thus alone in the last years of his life. He had
+tried so often to make another Pinocchio, but he had never been able
+to finish his work. His hands trembled; his eyes were no longer what
+they used to be, and even the wood--certainly it was the truth about
+the wood--wasn't what it used to be.
+
+When he heard the bell ring he felt his heart beat, and he ran to open
+the door, swaying from side to side like a drunken man.
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+"It's I, Geppetto. Don't you recognize me?"
+
+"My Fatina!"
+
+"Yes, indeed, your Fatina who has come to introduce her husband, the
+Bersaglierino, to you, and to see how you are, and to bring you
+somebody you are fond of, very fond of," she replied, as they entered.
+
+He gave her a long, questioning glance from beneath his spectacles;
+then he spied Pinocchio mischievously hiding behind Fatina and the
+Bersaglierino.
+
+"Oh, Fatina! Fatina! How did they bring my poor puppet to such a
+state?" sobbed Geppetto as he looked at Pinocchio. "What under the sun
+is all this machinery and these contraptions? I made him of wood, all
+of wood, and so splendidly that no one was ever able to imitate him.
+Why did you let them abuse him in this way? Wouldn't it have been
+better if you had let him stay a _real boy_ than to bring him back to
+me in this condition?"
+
+And the dear little old man couldn't contain himself and gave vent to
+his sorrow in loud weeping.
+
+Fatina and the Bersaglierino could find no words to comfort him with
+and looked at him compassionately, their own throats tightening. When
+Papa Geppetto had grown a little calmer he took his puppet in his arms
+and examined him carefully all over, shaking his head and drawing his
+lips tightly as if he wished to keep his sobs from bursting out again.
+He saw the artificial legs, the arm with its steel spring and the
+tweezers for hands; he saw the large silver plate which supported the
+breastbone--admired all this up-to-date mechanism, but was not in the
+least satisfied. The poor little old man preferred his wooden puppet
+_all of wood_ to the marrow ... and he no longer recognized _his_ old
+Pinocchio.
+
+"Oh, Fatina!" he said, sighing, "who brought him to such a state?"
+
+"Our country, dear friend."
+
+"Our country?" and for a moment he stood there, his eyes wide open
+with surprise. "Our country, did you say, Fatina?" Then he was lost in
+thought again.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+While the old man was bending over Pinocchio, Fatina and
+Bersaglierino quietly slipped out of the door. Papa Geppetto was again
+alone with his beloved puppet in the same room where he had first
+carved the little fellow out of pine wood.
+
+Don't you remember how Pinocchio first broke up everything before he
+ran away? How he knocked over the chest, rummaged the wardrobe, broke
+the mirror, upset the little table, turned over the chairs, pulled the
+pictures off the walls, and tore down the window-curtains? And don't
+you remember how he left everything in a mess and ran out into the
+street wrapped in a flowered chintz curtain?
+
+Well, Pinocchio was home again, and Papa Geppetto had long ago
+repaired the things Pinocchio had broken. Everything was in good order
+except Pinocchio himself. That was what worried the old man. He did
+not care much about the mirrors, wardrobes, or window-curtains, but he
+_did_ care about his little puppet friend whom he loved.
+
+It was getting dark and old Geppetto sat down in a large armchair and
+held Pinocchio on his lap. As the shadows began to gather and the room
+to get darker, Papa Geppetto began to nod and soon closed his eyes.
+With his arms clasped around Pinocchio, he went to sleep.
+
+If you could now step quietly into the room, you would see both of
+them asleep. The old man's head was resting on Pinocchio's head, and
+Pinocchio's on Geppetto's shoulder.
+
+The little puppet was sleeping quietly, but the old man was not. He
+seemed to be having a bad dream, judging from his sighs and groans.
+
+"Oh, Pinocchio!" he said, aloud, in his sleep, "why did you run away
+and go to the war? Just look at you! No legs, and one arm gone! I wish
+you were my dear wooden puppet again."
+
+Then the old man sighed, but kept on sleeping.
+
+After about two hours Papa Geppetto awoke. It was now quite dark, but
+not so dark that the old man could not see that some change had come
+over Pinocchio. He looked down at the little sleeping puppet and what
+do you think he saw? Not artificial legs and an arm. Oh no! Pinocchio
+was just as he was when he was first made. Pinocchio was again the
+little wooden puppet!
+
+Papa Geppetto was so overcome with joy that he caught up Pinocchio in
+his arms and hugged him so tight he nearly smothered the little
+fellow. And Pinocchio threw his arms around the old man's neck and
+kissed the top of his bald head.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Heart of Pinocchio, by Collodi Nipote
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41446 ***