Part 1 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration]
He turned round and stepped back a few steps. It seemed to him that some one was making a threatening gesture at him. Without hesitating a moment, he rushed forward with his head down, thras.h.i.+ng out blows like a madman. Then he heard a terrible smas.h.i.+ng of gla.s.s. Pinocchio had hit out at his own image in the wardrobe mirror, which naturally was shattered to bits. There is no need for me to tell you how he felt, because you will have no trouble in picturing it for yourselves.
”But how did I come to make such a blunder?” he asked himself, as soon as he had recovered from his surprise. ”How did I happen not to recognize myself in the mirror? Am I really so changed...? Can I indeed be changed into a real little boy or am I a puppet as I always was?”
”Just so! Just so! Just so!”
This time there could be no doubt about it. Pinocchio sprang toward the window, opened it, and stuck his head out. There below, a few feet lower down, was a beautiful terrace covered with flowering plants. In the midst of the plants was a stand, and on the stand a magnificent green parrot who just at that moment was scratching under his beak with his claw, and looking around him with one eye open. Down in the street below there was not a soul to be seen.
”Oh, you ugly beast! Was it you who was chattering 'just so, just so, just so'?”
The parrot burst out into a crazy laugh and began to sing in his cracked voice:
”Coccorito wants to know Who the gla.s.s gave such a blow.
Coccorito knows it well And the master he will tell.”
”Hah! Hah! Hah!” And he burst out into another guffaw. Patience, which is the only heritage of donkeys, was certainly not Pinocchio's princ.i.p.al virtue. Moreover, the parrot laughed in such a rude manner that he would have annoyed Jove himself.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
”Stop it, idiot!”
”Idiot, idiot, 'yot, 'yot.”
”Beast!”
”Beast!”
”Take care ...”
”Take ca-a-a-re.”
”I'll give it to you.”
”You, you, you.”
”Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!
Who the gla.s.s gave such a blow?
Coccorito knows it well And the master he will tell.”
”Will you? I'll make you shut up. Take this, you horrid beast!”
There was a large terra-cotta pot with a fine plant of basil in it standing on the window-sill, and the furious Pinocchio seized it in both hands and hurled it down with all his force. Coccorito would have come to a sad ending if the G.o.d of parrots had not protected his topknot. The flower-pot grazed the stand and was shattered against the marble parapet, and the pieces, falling down, hit against the large stained-gla.s.s window opening on to the terrace and broke it.
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