“Who can say?  It is better not even to think of it!”

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXXV

A HAPPY SURPRISE FOR PINOCCHIO

Pinocchio, having taken leave of his friend the Tunny, began to grope his way in the dark through the body of the Dog-Fish, taking a step at a time in the direction of the light that he saw shining dimly at a great distance.

The farther he advanced the brighter became the light; and he walked and walked until at last he reached it; and when he reached it—­what did he find?  I will give you a thousand guesses.  He found a little table spread out and on it a lighted candle stuck into a green glass bottle, and, seated at the table, was a little old man.  He was eating some live fish, and they were so very much alive that whilst he was eating them they sometimes even jumped out of his mouth.

At this sight Pinocchio was filled with such great and unexpected joy that he became almost delirious.  He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry, he wanted to say a thousand things, and instead he could only stammer out a few confused and broken words.  At last he succeeded in uttering a cry of joy, and, opening his arms, he threw them around the little old man’s neck, and began to shout: 

“Oh, my dear papa!  I have found you at last!  I will never leave you more, never more, never more!”

“Then my eyes tell me true?” said the little old man, rubbing his eyes; “then you are really my dear Pinocchio?”

“Yes, yes, I am Pinocchio, really Pinocchio!  And you have quite forgiven me, have you not?  Oh, my dear papa, how good you are!  And to think that I, on the contrary—­Oh! but if you only knew what misfortunes have been poured on my head, and all that has befallen me!  Only imagine, the day that you, poor, dear papa, sold your coat to buy me a spelling-book, that I might go to school, I escaped to see the puppet show, and the showman wanted to put me on the fire, that I might roast his mutton, and he was the same that afterwards gave me five gold pieces to take them to you, but I met the Fox and the Cat, who took me to the inn of The Red Craw-Fish, where they ate like wolves, and I left by myself in the middle of the night, and I encountered assassins who ran after me, and I ran away, and they followed, and I ran, and they always followed me, and I ran, until they hung me to a branch of a Big Oak, and the beautiful Child with blue hair sent a little carriage to fetch me, and the doctors when they saw me said immediately, ’If he is not dead, it is a proof that he is still alive’—­and then by chance I told a lie, and my nose began to grow until I could no longer get through the door of the room, for which reason I went with the Fox and the Cat to bury the four gold pieces, for one I had spent at the inn, and the Parrot began to laugh, and instead of two thousand gold pieces I found none left, for which reason the judge when he heard that I had