Pinocchio's legs were stiff and he could not move, but Geppetto led him by the hand and showed him how to put one foot before the other.
When his legs became flexible Pinocchio began to walk by himself and to run about the room; until, having gone out of the house door, he jumped into the street and escaped.
Poor Geppetto rushed after him but was not able to overtake him, for that rascal Pinocchio leapt in front of him like a hare, and knocking his wooden feet together against the pavement made as much clatter as twenty pairs of peasant's clogs.
"Stop him! stop him!" shouted Geppetto; but the people in the street, seeing a wooden puppet running like a racehorse stood still in astonishment to look at it, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, until it beats description....
IV
THE FIRE-EATER FRIGHTENS PINOCCHIO
When Pinocchio came into the little puppet theater, an incident occurred that almost produced a revolution. [page 401] I must tell you that the curtain was drawn up, and the play had already begun.
On the stage Harlequin and Punchinello were as usual quarreling with each other, and threatening every moment to come to blows.
The audience, all attention, laughed till they were ill as they listened to the bickerings of these two puppets, who gesticulated and abused each other so naturally that they might have been two reasonable beings, and two persons of the world.
All at once Harlequin stopped short, and turning to the public he pointed with his hand to some one far down in the pit, and exclaimed in a dramatic tone: