Pinocchio crossed his hands over his empty stomach and stood for a moment pondering. Never in all his life had he had presented to him so difficult a problem as this to solve. He thought and thought, and, like Galileo, had recourse to the experimental method. He knelt down in the snow and began to scrape it away with his hands on the spot where his body, covered by the latest issue of the newspaper, had left an impression. The smell of caramel sauce kept growing more fragrant, and Pinocchio's tongue licked the end of his nose so solemnly that he would have made the inventor of handkerchiefs blush with shame. Suddenly a deep opening appeared under the snow. Pinocchio stuck his arms in up to the elbows and uttered a shriek of terror. His hands and wrists were held as in a fiery vise and his arms were pulled so violently that he was jerked face down on the earth and his nose stuck into the snow.
If he had not been in such an uncomfortable position and had been able to look over his shoulder he would have seen four devils of Alpine troopers advancing very quietly, guns pointed and bayonets fixed. It could be only a starved Austrian who would attempt to enter through the dugout's little window cut through the snow into the officers' mess, and they intended giving him a fine welcome. A corporal with a reddish beard which hung down to his stomach stood two paces away, ready to give him a bayonet thrust that would have run him through like a snipe on a spit, but suddenly he focused his eyes on a certain point, advanced on his hands and knees, and began to read the "Latest News" which he had caught sight of in the seat of Pinocchio's trousers.
The Alpine troops are the bravest soldiers in the world; if any one doubts this let him ask the hunters of that foolish gallows-bird of an emperor; but they are not all well educated, and for this reason Corporal Scotimondo, as soon as he had spelled out the interesting headline, signaled to his comrades to advance cautiously.
You can't have the faintest idea of how important a newspaper becomes, even if it is not a particularly late one, up there among those snow-clad peaks where our soldiers were fighting for a greater Italy. So this editorial, which contained the news of the miraculous conquest of the Col di Lana, deserved to be preserved in the archives among the masterpieces of our glory, instead of in the seat of Pinocchio's trousers.
As I have told you, Corporal Scotimondo could scarcely spell, but among his three comrades Private Draghetta was looked upon as a genius, because as a civilian he had been a clerk in Cuneo. But Draghetta, who could see the Austrians a mile off and when he saw them never failed to knock them over with a shot from his gun, was nearsighted as a mole, and when he wanted to read had to rub his nose into the print.
When Pinocchio felt Draghetta's nose tickle him he began to kick like a donkey stung by a gadfly.
"Hold him tight; tie him. We've taken the Col di Lana! The Col di Lana is ours!"
"Really?"
"Read it, Draghetta ... don't be afraid ... I'll hold him for you."