"Do you mean to pretend that a little donkey like you must be kept on breasts of chickens, and capons in jelly?" asked his master, getting more and more angry, and whipping him again.
At this second whipping Pinocchio prudently held his tongue and said nothing more.
The stable was then shut and Pinocchio was left alone. He had not eaten for many hours and he began to yawn from hunger. And when he yawned he opened a mouth that seemed as wide as an oven.
At last, finding nothing else in the manger, he resigned himself and chewed a little hay; and after he had chewed it well, he shut his eyes and swallowed it.
"This hay is not bad," he said to himself; "but how much better it would have been if I had gone on with my studies! Instead of hay I might now be eating a hunch of new bread and a fine slice of sausage. But I must have patience!"
The next morning when he woke he looked in the manger for a little more hay; but he found none, for he had eaten it all during the night.
Then he took a mouthful of chopped straw, but whilst he was chewing it he had to acknowledge that the taste of chopped straw did not in the least resemble a savory dish of macaroni or pie.
"But I must have patience!" he repeated as he went on chewing. "May my example serve at least as a warning to all disobedient boys who do not want to study. Patience!"
"Patience indeed!" shouted his master, coming at that moment into the stable. "Do you think, my little donkey, that I bought you only to give you food and drink? I bought you to make you work, and that you might earn money for me. Up, then, at once! you must come with me into the circus, and there I will teach you to jump through hoops, to go through frames of paper head foremost, to dance waltzes and polkas, and to stand upright on your hind legs."
Poor Pinocchio, either by love or by force, had to learn all these fine things. But it took him three months before he had learned them, and he got many a whipping that nearly took off his skin.