Pinocchio, half-dazed, watched the minister.
Case followed case, and at the end of each one Pinocchio said to the minister, “Act. I bid you act. What you do is always well done.”
The minister knew so well how to act that on this one day there were sentences amounting to five hundred years of imprisonment, and two hundred years at hard labor, while a thousand prisoners were to be lashed, and one hundred were condemned to die.
Justice had been done. The emperor Pinocchio was led back to the royal palace amid the shouts of the people. He was declared to be the mildest, the wisest, and the most just of all kings, past, present, and future.
CHAPTER XXXIX
PINOCCHIO TRAVELS THROUGH THE EMPIRE
In order that his faithful subjects might behold their new sovereign, Pinocchio the First resolved to make a tour of the villages of his vast empire and see with his own eyes the needs of his people.