The Heart of Pinocchio Part 3

"Speak, you miserable creature!"

"General, he is a spy."

"We must question him in German ... he must be an Austrian."

"_Wer sind Sie?_"

No answer.

"What language do you speak, you little beast?"

Poor Pinocchio couldn't even draw a long breath. The general clutched him by the collar with such a military firmness that he turned the color of a ripe cherry. A little more and he would have been strangled to death.

The adjutant saved him by respectfully bidding the general remember that in questioning a prisoner it is necessary to allow him to breathe if you wish an answer.

"Mr. General ... forgive me. I am not a spy. It would be a real crime if you had me shot ... just as soon as we arrive at ... Give me a gun and I will go to war with the troops."

"Oh, you wretch! So you listened to all we said?"

"How could I help it? I was under here when the train started. It was I who helped Private Mollica to put all your stuff inside."

"Even this leather case?"

"Certainly I, I myself."

"Even the despatch-case with the plans! Major, give me your revolver so that I can shoot him like a dog."

"But why do you want to shoot me, Mr. General? I haven't done anything.... I wanted to go to the war to hear the cannon, but I never spied on any one, not even when I went to school.... Can you really take me for a Boche? No, for gracious' sake, no.... Look at my features.... No, no, no, for Heaven's sake! Keep your weapon quiet....

Don't you know who I am?... I am Pinocchio, Papa Geppetto's Pinocchio ... who only this morning broke your stained-gla.s.s window...."

At that point the general uttered such a roar that Pinocchio felt his breath leave him. But he saw the officer hand back the pistol to the major and take up from the seat a big leather bag; then he didn't see the bag again, but he felt it several times and with great force exactly on the part of his body which had suffered the most from the heat of the steam coil.... But Pinocchio was saved by his sincerity.

General Win-the-War could certainly not have bothered to beat a real spy, but I can tell you that at that moment Pinocchio would have preferred to be still a wooden puppet.

CHAPTER III

_How Pinocchio Sent a Solemn Protest to Francis Joseph to Rectify an Official Bulletin_

May had come with her blossoms, but up there a sharp wind was blowing so that it seemed still February. Pinocchio, half naked as he was, shivered like a leaf, and every now and then let out a sneeze which sounded like a bursting sh.e.l.l. At every sneeze Mollica gave him a kick, Corporal Fanfara a box on the ear, and Drummer Stecca a pinch.

The only one who didn't abuse him was Bersaglierino, the blond young soldier, more melancholy than his companions, whom he had first accosted in the station when they were setting out. I have told you that Pinocchio trembled with cold, and I will tell you that it was almost a good thing for him to do so; otherwise they would have seen him tremble with fear. If this had happened, his teasing companions would have driven him to despair. Pinocchio was to be pitied. He was at the front, the frontier several miles behind them, and any minute might bring Austrian bullets whistling through the air. The general had spared the youngster from being shot in the back, but he had given orders to put him in the very front line during the advance and to keep him well guarded. In one case the guns of the enemy would do justice to the suspected spy; in the other, Pinocchio would clear himself by his conduct and at the same time would lose his desire for a close view of the enemy.

Private Mollica was furious with him.

"Che-chew! che-chew! che-chew!"

"Plague take you!" Another kick. "Keep still, you little beast! If you let the enemy spot us I'll stick this bayonet in your backbone."

"I can't stand it any longer. I am frozen--che-chew!"

"Stop it!" Another box on the ear. "You are all right. You wanted to be a volunteer; now you see how much fun it is."

"I?"

"Yes, you.... You were the cause of the fine talking-to my general gave me, and you made me lose my place as an orderly where I had a chance to make extra soldi. If you hadn't gone and told him that you had helped me to carry his things and if you hadn't slipped under the seat of that same officer to listen to what he said, I shouldn't have been punished by being sent to the front."

"Are you afraid, then, Mollica?"

"I afraid? But don't you know that if I catch sight of an Austrian I'll eat him?"

"Like the food you took from the general," that rascal of a Pinocchio dared to remark.

There was a chorus of laughs that stopped as if by magic at the sound of a certain roar in the distance and of something whistling through the air and very near.

"There they are!"

"We're in it."

"Where?"

"Where are they?"

Who paid any attention now to Pinocchio? All of them had drawn close to one another and had rushed to the edge of the road, their guns pointed, to examine the distant landscape. The mountain was very steep there and covered with thick vegetation. Down at the bottom, toward the plain, there seemed to be an unexpected rise ... after the steep descent a green stretch through which a river ran like a silver ribbon. Still farther, was a chain of low mountains, almost like a cloud on the edge of the peaceful horizon.

There was the roar of some more shots and the whistling of the sh.e.l.ls, and a branch of a tree was splintered and fell.

Pinocchio, alone in the middle of the road, felt a creeping up and down his spine and experienced a trembling in his legs that shook like a palsied man's. The second time he heard a sh.e.l.l whistle he felt that he must find a hole in which to hide himself. He looked about him and caught sight near by of an enormous larch-tree which pointed directly toward the heavens. I don't know how to explain it, but the sight of it took away from Pinocchio the desire to hide himself under the ground and made him wish to climb toward the stars. He gave a spring and shinned up the big trunk in a flash. I bet you a plugged soldo against a lira that you would have done the same....

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I SEE THE SUET-EATERS"]

"I see them! I see them!"

"Who?"

"Whom do you see?"

"Where are they? Where are you that we can't see you?"

"I am up here."

"Bravo! And whom do you see?" Bersaglierino asked.

"I see the suet-eaters."

"Where are they?"

"Down there where there is a kind of slope there is a town hidden among the trees ... up here you can see a roof and the spire of a bell-tower ... you can see people on the roof ... you can see something glisten ... now they are firing."