Then the puppet lost heart and was just on the point of throwing himself on the ground and giving up, when, glancing all around, he saw in the distance, amid the dark green of the trees, a little house gleaming white as snow.
“If only I had breath enough to reach that house, perhaps I'd be saved!” he said to himself.
And without wasting a minute, he started running through the wood again at full speed. And the assassins always behind him.
After a desperate race of nearly two hours, at last, quite out of breath, he reached the door of that little house and knocked.
Nobody answered.
He knocked again, harder, because he could hear the sound of footsteps coming closer and the heavy, panting breath of his pursuers.
The same silence.
Seeing that knocking did no good at all, in his despair he began kicking the door and butting it with his head. Then a beautiful Little Girl appeared at the window, with blue hair and a face as white as a wax image, her eyes closed and her hands crossed on her breast, and without moving her lips at all, she said in a tiny voice that seemed to come from the other world:
“There is nobody in this house; they are all dead.”
“Then at least you open the door for me!” cried Pinocchio, weeping and pleading.
“I am dead too.”
“Dead? Then what are you doing there at the window?”
“I am waiting for the coffin to come and carry me away.”
As soon as she had said this, the Little Girl vanished and the window closed again without a sound.
“Oh, beautiful Little Girl with Blue Hair,” cried Pinocchio, “open the door, for pity's sake! Have mercy on a poor boy who is being chased by the assass....”
But he could not finish the word, because he felt himself seized by the neck, and the same two horrible voices growled at him menacingly:
“You won't get away from us this time!”
The puppet, seeing death flash before his eyes, was seized by such a violent trembling that, as he shook, the joints of his wooden legs rattled, and so did the four gold pieces he was keeping hidden under his tongue.
“Well?” the assassins asked him. “Are you going to open your mouth, yes or no? Ah! You won't answer? Never mind: this time we'll open it for you!...”
And pulling out two big knives, long, long and sharp as razors, swish and swish... they struck him two blows right in the middle of his back.
But luckily for him the puppet was made of very hard wood, so that the blades broke and flew into a thousand splinters, and the assassins were left with the knife handles in their hands, staring at each other.
“I see,” said one of them then, “we'll have to hang him. Let's hang him!”
“Let's hang him,” repeated the other.
No sooner said than done: they tied his hands behind his back, slipped a running noose round his throat, and hung him dangling from the branch of a huge tree called the Big Oak.
Then they settled down there, sitting on the grass, waiting for the puppet to give his last kick: but after three hours the puppet still had his eyes open and his mouth shut, and was kicking harder than ever.
Tired of waiting at last, they turned to Pinocchio and said to him with a sneering laugh:
“Goodbye till tomorrow. When we come back here tomorrow, we hope you'll do us the kindness of being good and dead, with your mouth wide open.”
And off they went.
Meanwhile a fierce north wind had sprung up, and blowing and roaring with fury, it tossed the poor hanged puppet this way and that, swinging him violently like the clapper of a bell ringing for a feast day. And that swinging gave him the sharpest pains, and the running noose, tightening more and more round his throat, took his breath away.
Little by little his eyes grew dim; and although he felt death coming near, he still kept hoping that at any moment some kind soul would come along to help him.
But when, after waiting and waiting, he saw that nobody came, nobody at all, then he remembered his poor father.... and, almost dying, he stammered:
“Oh, Father, Father! If only you were here!...”
And he had no breath to say anything more. He shut his eyes, opened his mouth, stretched out his legs, gave one great shudder, and hung there as if frozen stiff.