Before they left, the carabineers called some fishermen, who were passing at that moment near the shore in their boat, and said to them:
'We give this boy who has been wounded in the head into your charge. Carry him to your house and nurse him. To-morrow we will come and see him.'
They then turned to Pinocchio, and having placed him between them they said to him in a commanding voice:
'Forward! and walk quickly! or it will be the worse for you.'
Without requiring it to be repeated, the puppet set out along the road leading to the village. But the poor little devil hardly knew where he was. He thought he must be dreaming, and what a dreadful dream! He was beside himself. He saw double: his legs shook: his tongue clung to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a word. And yet in the midst of his stupefaction and apathy his heart was pierced by a cruel thorn—the thought that he would have to pass under the windows of the good Fairy's house between the carabineers. He would rather have died.
They had already reached the village when a gust of wind blew Pinocchio's cap off his head and carried it ten yards off.
'Will you permit me,' said the puppet to the carabineers, 'to go and get my cap?'
