to roam around
at night ringing people's bells while they are peacefully asleep.

After a minute or two, the same voice cried:

"Get under the window and hold out your hat!"

Pinocchio had no hat, but he managed to get under the window just in
time to feel a shower of ice-cold water pour down on his poor wooden
head, his shoulders, and over his whole body.

He returned home as wet as a rag, and tired out from weariness and
hunger.

As he no longer had any strength left with which to stand, he sat down
on a little stool and put his two feet on the stove to dry them.

There he fell asleep, and while he slept, his wooden feet began to burn.
Slowly, very slowly, they blackened and turned to ashes.

Pinocchio snored away happily as if his feet were not his own. At dawn
he opened his eyes just as a loud knocking sounded at the door.

"Who is it?" he called, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

"It is I," answered a voice.

It was the voice of Geppetto.

CHAPTER 7

Geppetto returns home and gives his own breakfast to the Marionette

The poor Marionette, who was still half asleep, had not yet found out
that his two feet were burned and gone. As soon as he heard his Father's
voice, he jumped up from his seat to open the door, but, as he did so,
he staggered and fell headlong to the floor.

In falling, he made as much noise as a sack of wood falling from the
fifth story of a house.

"Open the door for me!" Geppetto shouted from the street.

"Father, dear Father, I can't," answered the Marionette in despair,
crying and rolling on the floor.

"Why can't you?"

"Because someone has eaten my feet."

"And who has eaten them?"

"The cat," answered Pinocchio, seeing that little animal busily playing
with some shavings in the corner of the room.

"Open! I say," repeated Geppetto, "or I'll give you a sound whipping
when I get in."

"Father, believe me, I can't stand up. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I shall have
to walk on my knees all my life."

Geppetto, thinking that all these tears and cries were only other pranks
of the Marionette, climbed up the side of the house and went in through
the window.

At first he was very angry, but on seeing Pinocchio stretched out on the
floor and really without feet, he felt very sad and sorrowful. Picking
him up from the floor, he fondled and caressed him, talking to him while
the tears ran down his cheeks:

"My little Pinocchio, my dear little Pinocchio! How did you burn your