Pinocchio. The first pranks of the Marionette.


Little as Geppetto's house was, it was neat and comfortable. It was a
small room on the ground floor, with a tiny window under the stairway.
The furniture could not have been much simpler: a very old chair, a
rickety old bed, and a tumble-down table. A fireplace full of burning
logs was painted on the wall opposite the door. Over the fire, there
was painted a pot full of something which kept boiling happily away and
sending up clouds of what looked like real steam.

As soon as he reached home, Geppetto took his tools and began to cut and
shape the wood into a Marionette.

"What shall I call him?" he said to himself. "I think I'll call him
PINOCCHIO. This name will make his fortune. I knew a whole family of
Pinocchi once--Pinocchio the father, Pinocchia the mother, and Pinocchi
the children--and they were all lucky. The richest of them begged for
his living."

After choosing the name for his Marionette, Geppetto set seriously to
work to make the hair, the forehead, the eyes. Fancy his surprise
when he noticed that these eyes moved and then stared fixedly at him.
Geppetto, seeing this, felt insulted and said in a grieved tone:

"Ugly wooden eyes, why do you stare so?"

There was no answer.

After the eyes, Geppetto made the nose, which began to stretch as soon