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Liberated from prison, he starts to return to the Fairy's house; but on the road he meets with a horrible serpent, and afterwards he is caught in a trap.
Y OU can imagine Pinocchio's joy when he found himself free. Without stopping to take breath he immediately left the town and took the road that led to the Fairy's house.
On account of the rainy weather the road had become a marsh into which he sank
Whilst he was saying this he stopped suddenly, frightened to death, and made four steps backwards.
What had he
He had seen an immense Serpent stretched across the road. Its skin was green, it had red eyes, and a pointed tail that was smoking like a chimney.
It would be impossible to imagine the puppet's terror. He walked away to a safe distance, and sitting down on a heap of stones waited until the Serpent should have gone about its business and had left the road clear.
He waited an hour; two hours; three hours; but the Serpent was always there, and even from a distance he could see the red light of his fiery eyes and the column of smoke that ascended from the end of his tail.
At last Pinocchio, trying to feel courageous, approached to within a few steps, and said to the Serpent in a little, soft, insinuating voice:
"Excuse me, Sir Serpent, but would you be so good as to move a little to one side, just enough to allow me to pass?"
He might as well have spoken to the wall. Nobody moved.
He began again in the same soft voice:
"You must know, Sir Serpent, that I am on my way home, where my father is
waiting for me, and it is such a long time since I saw him
He waited for a sign in answer to this request, but there was none: in fact the Serpent, who up to that moment had been sprightly and full of life, became motionless and almost rigid. He shut his eyes and his tail ceased smoking.
"Can he really be dead?" said Pinocchio, rubbing his hands with delight; and he determined to jump over him and reach the other side of the road. But just as he was going to leap the Serpent raised himself suddenly on end, like a spring set in motion; and the puppet, drawing back, in his terror caught his feet and fell to the ground.
And he fell so awkwardly that his head stuck in the mud and his legs went into the air.
At the sight of the puppet kicking violently with his head in the mud the
Serpent went into convulsions of laughter, and he laughed, and laughed, and
laughed, until from the violence of his laughter he broke a
Pinocchio then set off running in hopes that he should reach the Fairy's house
before dark. But before long he began to suffer so dreadfully from hunger that
he could not bear it, and he jumped into a field by the
He had scarcely reached the vines when
The poor puppet had been taken in a trap put there to capture some big polecats
who were the scourge of the
The poor puppet had been taken in a trap. |