Without loss of time he placed an earthenware saucer on a brazier full of red-hot embers.  Into the saucer instead of oil or butter he poured a little water; and when the water began to smoke, tac! he broke the egg-shell over it and let the contents drop in.  But, instead of the white and the yolk a little chicken popped out very gay and polite.  Making a beautiful courtesy it said to him: 

“A thousand thanks, Master Pinocchio, for saving me the trouble of breaking the shell.  Adieu until we meet again.  Keep well, and my best compliments to all at home!”

Thus saying, it spread its wings, darted through the open window and, flying away, was lost to sight.

The poor puppet stood as if he had been bewitched, with his eyes fixed, his mouth open, and the egg-shell in his hand.  Recovering, however, from his first stupefaction, he began to cry and scream, and to stamp his feet on the floor in desperation, and amidst his sobs he said: 

“Ah, indeed, the Talking-Cricket was right.  If I had not run away from home, and if my papa were here, I should not now be dying of hunger!  Oh! what a dreadful illness hunger is!”

And, as his stomach cried out more than ever and he did not know how to quiet it, he thought he would leave the house and make an excursion in the neighborhood in hopes of finding some charitable person who would give him a piece of bread.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI

PINOCCHIO’S FEET BURN TO CINDERS

It was a wild and stormy night.  The thunder was tremendous and the lightning so vivid that the sky seemed on fire.

Pinocchio had a great fear of thunder, but hunger was stronger than fear.  He therefore closed the house door and made a rush for the village, which he reached in a hundred bounds, with his tongue hanging out and panting for breath like a dog after game.

But he found it all dark and deserted.  The shops were closed, the windows shut, and there was not so much as a dog in the street.  It seemed the land of the dead.

Pinocchio, urged by desperation and hunger, took hold of the bell of a house and began to ring it with all his might, saying to himself: 

“That will bring somebody.”

And so it did.  A little old man appeared at a window with a night-cap on his head and called to him angrily: 

“What do you want at such an hour?”

“Would you be kind enough to give me a little bread?”

“Wait there, I will be back directly,” said the little old man, thinking it was one of those rascally boys who amuse themselves at night by ringing the house-bells to rouse respectable people who are sleeping quietly.

After half a minute the window was again opened and the voice of the same little old man shouted to Pinocchio: 

“Come underneath and hold out your cap.”

Pinocchio pulled off his cap; but, just as he held it out, an enormous basin of water was poured down on him, soaking him from head to foot as if he had been a pot of dried-up geraniums.