CHAPTER 4

I will tell you then, children, that while poor old Geppetto was led to prison without having done any wrong, that roue Pinocchio, being free, took to his heels and ran toward the fields in order more easily to reach his house. In his haste he jumped high mounds of earth, hedges of thorns, and ditches of water, just as rabbits and deer do when chased by hunters.

When he arrived before the house he found the door to the street half shut. He pushed it open, entered the room, and bolted the door. Then he threw himself down on the floor and heaved a great big sigh of happiness.

But his happiness did not last very long for soon he heard some one crying in the room — "Cri-cri cri!"

"Who is speaking to me?" said Pinocchio, frightened.

"It is I."

Pinocchio turned around and saw a large cricket that walked slowly up on the wall.

"Tell me, Cricket, who are you?"

"I am the Talking Cricket, and I have lived in this room for more than a hundred years."

"To-day, however, this room is mine," said the marionette, "and if you wish to do me a favor, go away immediately, without even turning yourself around once."

"I will not go away from here," said the Cricket, "without telling you a great truth."

"Tell it to me and be gone."

"Woe to boys who rebel against their parents, and who foolishly run away from their homes. They will never get along well in the world, and sooner or later will bitterly repent of their actions."

"Sing on, little Cricket, if it pleases you; but I know that to-morrow, at the dawn of day, I shall go away, because if I remain here, what happens to all other boys will happen to me. I shall have to go to school and be made to study; and I will tell you in confidence that I have no wish to study at all, and I propose to play and run after butterflies and climb trees and take the little birds out of their nests."

"Poor little stupid thing! Do you not know that in doing so you will become a donkey, and that everybody will make fun of you?"

"Be quiet, you dismal little Cricket!" cried Pinocchio.

But the Cricket, who was a patient philosopher, instead of becoming angry at this impertinence, continued in the same tone of voice: "And if it does not please you to go to school, why not at least learn a trade, so as to be able to earn honestly a piece of bread?"

"Do you wish me to tell you?" replied Pinocchio, who began to lose patience; "because among the trades of the world there is only one that suits my genius."

"And what trade may that be?"

"That of eating, drinking, sleeping, and amusing myself, and of living, from morning to night, an easy life."

"Those who live that way," said the Talking Cricket with his usual calmness, "always end in the hospital or in prison."

"Take care, Cricket, take care! If you make me angry I pity you."

"Poor Pinocchio! you make me pity you."

"Why do I make you pity me?"

"Because you are a marionette; and, what is worse, you have a wooden head."

At these words Pinocchio jumped up enraged, and taking a hammer from a bench flung it at the Talking Cricket.

Perhaps he did not intend to do such a thing; but unfortunately the hammer struck the poor little Cricket in the head and killed him.