At last, by sheer luck, a Carabineer* happened along, who, hearing all that noise, thought that it might be a runaway colt, and stood bravely in the middle of the street, with legs wide apart, firmly resolved to stop it and prevent any trouble.

     * A military policeman

Pinocchio saw the Carabineer from afar and tried his best to escape between the legs of the big fellow, but without success.

The Carabineer grabbed him by the nose (it was an extremely long one and seemed made on purpose for that very thing) and returned him to Mastro Geppetto.

The little old man wanted to pull Pinocchio’s ears.  Think how he felt when, upon searching for them, he discovered that he had forgotten to make them!

All he could do was to seize Pinocchio by the back of the neck and take him home.  As he was doing so, he shook him two or three times and said to him angrily: 

“We’re going home now.  When we get home, then we’ll settle this matter!”

Pinocchio, on hearing this, threw himself on the ground and refused to take another step.  One person after another gathered around the two.

Some said one thing, some another.

“Poor Marionette,” called out a man.  “I am not surprised he doesn’t want to go home.  Geppetto, no doubt, will beat him unmercifully, he is so mean and cruel!”

“Geppetto looks like a good man,” added another, “but with boys he’s a real tyrant.  If we leave that poor Marionette in his hands he may tear him to pieces!”

They said so much that, finally, the Carabineer ended matters by setting Pinocchio at liberty and dragging Geppetto to prison.  The poor old fellow did not know how to defend himself, but wept and wailed like a child and said between his sobs: 

“Ungrateful boy!  To think I tried so hard to make you a well-behaved Marionette!  I deserve it, however!  I should have given the matter more thought.”

What happened after this is an almost unbelievable story, but you may read it, dear children, in the chapters that follow.

CHAPTER 4

The story of Pinocchio and the Talking Cricket, in which one sees that bad children do not like to be corrected by those who know more than they do.

Very little time did it take to get poor old Geppetto to prison.  In the meantime that rascal, Pinocchio, free now from the clutches of the Carabineer, was running wildly across fields and meadows, taking one short cut after another toward home.  In his wild flight, he leaped over brambles and bushes, and across brooks and ponds, as if he were a goat or a hare chased by hounds.

On reaching home, he found the house door half open.  He slipped into the room, locked the door, and threw himself on the floor, happy at his escape.

But his happiness lasted only a short time, for just then he heard someone saying: