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VI PINOCCHIO FALLS ASLEEP WITH HIS FEET ON THE BRAZIER, AND WAKES IN THE MORNING TO FIND THEM BURNT OFE T was a wild and stormy winter’s night. The thunder was tremendous and the lightning so vivid that the sky seemed on fire. A bitter blusterous wind whistled angrily, and raising clouds of dust swept over the country, causing the trees to creak and groan as it passed. Pinocchio had a great fear of thunder, but hunger was stronger than fear. He therefore closed the house door and made a rush for the village, which he reached in a hundred bounds, with his tongue hanging out and panting for breath, like a dog after game. But he found it all dark and deserted. The shops were closed, the windows shut, and there was not so much as a dog in the street. It seemed the land of the dead. Pinocchio, urged by desperation and hunger, laid hold of the bell of a house and began to peal it with all his might, saying to himself: “That will bring somebody.” And so it did. A little old man appeared at a window with a nightcap on his head, and called to him angrily: 32
