“Don’t speak about it!” cried Pinocchio, trembling with fear. “Don’t speak about it! If you had arrived a minute later, I should have been fried, eaten, and digested. Brrr! It makes me shake only to think of it!”
Aladdin, laughing, held out his paw, which Pinocchio took. After shaking hands like two good friends, they separated. The Dog went home and Pinocchio went to a little town not far away. There he asked an old man who was sitting in the doorway basking in the sun, “Tell me, do you know anything about a little boy who was wounded and who is called Eugene?”
“The boy has been carried into this town by some fishermen and he is now—”
“Not dead?” interrupted Pinocchio in great grief.
“No; he is alive and has gone home.”
“Truly? truly?” cried the marionette, jumping up and down with great joy. “Then the wound was not serious?”
“No; but it might have been, for he was struck by a large book.”
“And who threw it?”
“One of his companions; a certain Pinocchio.”
“Who is this Pinocchio?”
“They say that he is a bad boy, a vagabond and a true scoundrel.”
