“You young rascal!  You are not yet completed and you are already beginning to show want of respect to your father!  That is bad, my boy, very bad!”

And he dried a tear.

The legs and the feet remained to be done.

When Geppetto had finished the feet he received a kick on the point of his nose.

“I deserve it!” he said to himself; “I should have thought of it sooner!  Now it is too late!”

He then took the puppet under the arms and placed him on the floor to teach him to walk.

Pinocchio’s legs were stiff and he could not move, but Geppetto led him by the hand and showed him how to put one foot before the other.

When his legs became limber Pinocchio began to walk by himself and to run about the room, until, having gone out of the house door, he jumped into the street and escaped.

Poor Geppetto rushed after him but was not able to overtake him, for that rascal Pinocchio leaped in front of him like a hare and knocking his wooden feet together against the pavement made as much clatter as twenty pairs of peasants’ clogs.

“Stop him! stop him!” shouted Geppetto; but the people in the street, seeing a wooden puppet running like a race-horse, stood still in astonishment to look at it, and laughed and laughed.

At last, as good luck would have it, a soldier arrived who, hearing the uproar, imagined that a colt had escaped from his master.  Planting himself courageously with his legs apart in the middle of the road, he waited with the determined purpose of stopping him and thus preventing the chance of worse disasters.

When Pinocchio, still at some distance, saw the soldier barricading the whole street, he endeavored to take him by surprise and to pass between his legs.  But he failed entirely.

The soldier without disturbing himself in the least caught him cleverly by the nose and gave him to Geppetto.  Wishing to punish him, Geppetto intended to pull his ears at once.  But imagine his feelings when he could not succeed in finding them.  And do you know the reason?  In his hurry to model him he had forgotten to make any ears.

He then took him by the collar and as he was leading him away he said to him, shaking his head threateningly: 

“We will go home at once, and as soon as we arrive we will settle our accounts, never doubt it.”

At this information Pinocchio threw himself on the ground and would not take another step.  In the meanwhile a crowd of idlers and inquisitive people began to assemble and to make a ring around them.

Some of them said one thing, some another.

“Poor puppet!” said several, “he is right not to wish to return home!  Who knows how Geppetto, that bad old man, will beat him!”

And the others added maliciously: 

“Geppetto seems a good man! but with boys he is a regular tyrant!  If that poor puppet is left in his hands he is quite capable of tearing him in pieces!”