do is to fry you with all the others. Being fried with companions is always a consolation.”
At this allusion the unhappy Pinocchio began to weep. He exclaimed: “How much better would it have been if I had gone to school! I listened to the bad advice of my school friends and now I am paying for it. Ih! ih! ih!”
Because Pinocchio twisted and turned like an eel the fisherman took a piece of cord and bound him tightly and threw him in with the others. Then he pulled out a box of flour and, having buttered the fish all over, began to dip them into it so as to make them taste nice. The first to be put into the pan were the mullets, then the soles, then the bass, and finally it came Pinocchio’s turn. The marionette, seeing himself so close to death—and such a mean death!—trembled all over with fright and had no breath left to say anything.
The poor boy looked sadly at the fisherman; but the green man, without paying any attention, buttered him all over from head to foot, so that he looked like a marionette of chalk.
Then he took him by the neck and—
