Pinocchio, as soon as he had said good-by to his good friend, the Tunny,
tottered away in the darkness and began to walk as well as he could
toward the faint light which glowed in the distance.
As he walked his feet splashed in a pool of greasy and slippery water,
which had such a heavy smell of fish fried in oil that Pinocchio thought
it was Lent.
The farther on he went, the brighter and clearer grew the tiny light. On
and on he walked till finally he found--I give you a thousand guesses,
my dear children! He found a little table set for dinner and lighted by
a candle stuck in a glass bottle; and near the table sat a little old
man, white as the snow, eating live fish. They wriggled so that, now and
again, one of them slipped out of the old man's mouth and escaped into
the darkness under the table.
At this sight, the poor Marionette was filled with such great and sudden
happiness that he almost dropped in a faint. He wanted to laugh, he
wanted to cry, he wanted to say a thousand and one things, but all he
could do was to stand still, stuttering and stammering brokenly.
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