He returned home like a wet chicken, quite exhausted with fatigue and hunger; and, having no longer strength to stand, he sat down and rested his damp and muddy feet on a brazier full of burning embers.

And then he fell asleep, and whilst he slept his feet, which were wooden, took fire, and little by little they burnt away and became cinders.

Pinocchio continued to sleep and to snore as if his feet belonged to some one else.  At last about daybreak he awoke because some one was knocking at the door.

“Who is there?” he asked, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“It is I!” answered a voice.

And Pinocchio recognized Geppetto’s voice.

CHAPTER VII

GEPPETTO GIVES HIS OWN BREAKFAST TO PINOCCHIO

Poor Pinocchio, whose eyes were still half shut from sleep, had not as yet discovered that his feet were burnt off.  The moment, therefore, that he heard his father’s voice he slipped off his stool to run and open the door; but, after stumbling two or three times, he fell his whole length on the floor.

And the noise he made in falling was as if a sack of wooden ladles had been thrown from a fifth story.

“Open the door!” shouted Geppetto from the street.

“Dear papa, I cannot,” answered the puppet, crying and rolling about on the ground.

“Why can’t you?”

“Because my feet have been eaten.”

“And who has eaten your feet?”

“The cat,” said Pinocchio, seeing the cat, who was amusing herself by making some shavings dance with her forepaws.

“Open the door, I tell you!” repeated Geppetto.  “If you don’t, when I get into the house you shall have the cat from me!”

“I cannot stand up, believe me.  Oh, poor me! poor me!  I shall have to walk on my knees for the rest of my life!”

Geppetto, believing that all this lamentation was only another of the puppet’s tricks, thought of a means of putting an end to it, and, climbing up the wall, he got in at the window.

He was very angry and at first he did nothing but scold; but when he saw his Pinocchio lying on the ground and really without feet he was quite overcome.  He took him in his arms and began to kiss and caress him, and to say a thousand endearing things to him, and as the big tears ran down his cheeks he said, sobbing: 

“My little Pinocchio! how did you manage to burn your feet?”

“I don’t know, papa, but it has been such a dreadful night that I shall remember it as long as I live.  It thundered and lightened, and I was very hungry, and then the Talking-Cricket said to me:  ’It serves you right; you have been wicked and you deserve it,’ and I said to him:  ‘Take care, Cricket!’ and he said:  ’You are a puppet and you have a wooden head,’ and I threw the handle of a hammer at him, and he died, but the fault was his, for I didn’t wish to kill