At the sound of his loud outcries a beautiful little Marmot that lived on the first floor came into the room.  Seeing the puppet in such grief she asked earnestly: 

“What has happened to you, my dear fellow-lodger?”

“I am ill, my dear little Marmot, very ill, and my illness frightens me.  Do you understand counting a pulse?”

“A little.”

“Then feel and see if by chance I have got fever.”

The little Marmot raised her right fore-paw, and, after having felt
Pinocchio’s pulse, she said to him, sighing: 

“My friend, I am grieved to be obliged to give you bad news!”

“What is it?”

“You have got a very bad fever!”

“What fever is it?”

“It is donkey fever.”

“That is a fever that I do not understand,” said the puppet, but he understood it only too well.

“Then I will explain it to you,” said the Marmot.  “You must know that in two or three hours you will be no longer a puppet, or a boy.”

“Then what shall I be?”

“In two or three hours you will become really and truly a little donkey, like those that draw carts and carry cabbages and salad to market.”

“Oh, unfortunate that I am! unfortunate that I am!” cried Pinocchio, seizing his two ears with his hands and pulling them and tearing them furiously as if they had been some one else’s ears.

“My dear boy,” said the Marmot, by way of consoling him, “you can do nothing.  It is destiny.  It is written in the decrees of wisdom that all boys who are lazy, and who take a dislike to books, to schools, and to masters, and who pass their time in amusement, games, and diversions, must end sooner or later by becoming transformed into so many little donkeys.”

“But is it really so?” asked the puppet, sobbing.

“It is indeed only too true!  And tears are now useless.  You should have thought of it sooner!”

“But it was not my fault; believe me, little Marmot, the fault was all Candlewick’s!”

“And who is this Candlewick?”

“One of my school-fellows.  I wanted to return home; I wanted to be obedient.  I wished to study, but Candlewick said to me:  ’Why should you bother yourself by studying?  Why should you go to school?  Come with us instead to the “Land of Boobies”; there we shall none of us have to learn; there we shall amuse ourselves from morning to night, and we shall always be merry’.”

“And why did you follow the advice of that false friend? of that bad companion?”

“Why?  Because, my dear little Marmot, I am a puppet with no sense, and with no heart.  Ah! if I had had the least heart I should never have left that good Fairy who loved me like a mamma, and who had done so much for me!  And I would be no longer a puppet, for I would by this time have become a little boy like so many others:  But if I meet Candlewick, woe to him!  He shall hear what I think of him!”