The Adventures of Pinocchio (1904)/Chapter 6
It was a horrible night. It thundered very heavily and it lightened as if the heavens would take fire, while an ugly wind whistled savagely and raised an immense cloud of dust.
Pinocchio was afraid of thunder and lightning, but his hunger was greater than his fear. In a few hundred jumps he arrived at the edge of the town, out of breath, with his tongue hanging out on his chin, just like a hunting dog. But he found the town all dark and deserted. The stores were closed; the doors of the houses were shut and the windows were bolted; there was not even a dog in the streets; it appeared as if the town were dead.
Then Pinocchio despairingly pulled a doorbell of one of the houses and rang it with all his might, saying to himself, “Some one will come.”
Soon a cross old man with a nightcap on his head looked out of a window and cried: “What do you want at this hour?”
“Will you please give me a little bread?”
“Wait there, and I will return immediately,” replied the old man, believing that he had to deal with some of the bad boys who go around at night worrying people by ringing their bells. After half a minute the window opened again and the same old man said to Pinocchio, “Come under the window and hold your hat.”
Pinocchio, who had not yet a hat, approached and was nearly drowned by a great deluge of water that the old man poured down on him from a large bucket.
He returned home like a drowned rat, weak from hunger and tired out; and because he had not enough strength to stand upright, he fell into a chair and rested his feet on the stove that was filled with burning shavings, and fell asleep. But while he slept, his feet, which were of wood, took fire and slowly became cinders. But Pinocchio snored away just as if his feet belonged to some one else.
He was awakened the next morning by some one who had knocked at the door.
“Who is there?” he asked, yawning and rubbing his eyes.
“It is I,” replied a voice.
That voice was the voice of Geppetto.