As you can well imagine, the Fairy let the puppet cry and howl for a good half-hour over that nose of his that would no longer go through the bedroom door; and she did it to teach him a stern lesson and to cure him of the nasty habit of telling lies, the nastiest habit a boy can have. But when she saw him all changed in the face, with his eyes popping out of his head in utter despair, she was moved to pity and clapped her hands; and at that signal a thousand big birds called Woodpeckers flew into the room through the window, and they all perched on Pinocchio's nose and began to peck at it so much, and then so much more, that in a few minutes that enormous, outrageous nose was back to its natural size.
“How good you are, my Fairy,” said the puppet, drying his eyes, “and how much I love you!”
“I love you too,” answered the Fairy, “and if you want to stay with me, you shall be my little brother and I shall be your good little sister…”
“I would gladly stay… but what about my poor father?”
“I have thought of everything. Your father has already been told, and he will be here before nightfall.”
“Really?” cried Pinocchio, jumping for joy. “Then, my dear little Fairy, if you don't mind, I should like to go and meet him! I can't wait to give a kiss to that poor old man, who has suffered so much for my sake!”
“Go along, then, but mind you don't get lost. Take the road through the wood, and I am sure you will meet him.”
Pinocchio set off, and as soon as he was in the wood he began to run like a young deer. But when he had reached a certain spot, almost in front of the Big Oak, he stopped, because he thought he had heard people among the bushes. And sure enough, who should he see coming out on to the road but – guess who?… the Fox and the Cat, that is, the two travelling companions he had had supper with at the Red Crawfish Inn.
“Here's our dear Pinocchio!” cried the Fox, hugging and kissing him. “How do you come to be here?”
“How do you come to be here?” repeated the Cat.
“It's a long story,” said the puppet, “and I'll tell it to you when there's time. But you must know that the other night, when you left me alone at the inn, I met the assassins on the road…”
“The assassins?… Oh, you poor friend! And what did they want?”
“They wanted to steal my gold pieces.”
“Villains!…” said the Fox.
“Most villainous villains!” repeated the Cat.
“But I started to run away,” the puppet went on, “and they kept after me, until they caught up with me and hanged me from a branch of that oak…”
And Pinocchio pointed to the Big Oak, which was just a couple of steps away.
“Did you ever hear of anything worse?” said the Fox. “What a world we are condemned to live in! Where shall we honest folk ever find a safe refuge?”
While they were talking like this, Pinocchio noticed that the Cat was lame in his right front leg, because the whole of his paw, claws and all, was missing at the end; so he asked him:
“What have you done with your paw?”
The Cat wanted to answer something, but he got muddled. So the Fox said at once:
“My friend is too modest, and that is why he doesn't answer. I'll answer for him. You must know, then, that an hour ago we met an old wolf on the road, almost fainting with hunger, who begged us for a little charity. As we hadn't so much as a fishbone to give him, what did my friend do, he who truly has a heart as big as Caesar's? He bit off one of his front paws with his own teeth and threw it to that poor beast, so that he could break his fast.”
And as he said this, the Fox wiped away a tear.
Pinocchio, who was touched too, went up to the Cat and whispered in his ear:
“If all cats were like you, how lucky the mice would be!”
“And what are you doing in these parts now?” the Fox asked the puppet.
“I'm waiting for my father, who should be arriving here any moment.”
“And your gold pieces?”
“I've still got them in my pocket, all except one, which I spent at the Red Crawfish Inn.”
“And to think that, instead of four coins, by tomorrow they could become a thousand, or two thousand! Why don't you take my advice? Why don't you go and sow them in the Field of Miracles?”
“Today it's impossible: I'll go there another day.”
“Another day will be too late!” said the Fox.
“Why?”
“Because that field has been bought by a great gentleman, and from tomorrow on nobody will be allowed to sow money there any more.”
“How far is it from here to the Field of Miracles?”
“Barely two kilometres. Will you come with us? In half an hour you'll be there: you sow your four coins straight away; a few minutes later you gather two thousand, and this evening you come back here with your pockets full. Will you come with us?”
Pinocchio hesitated a little before answering, because he remembered the good Fairy, old Geppetto and the warnings of the Talking Cricket; but in the end he did what all boys do who haven't a scrap of sense or of heart: in the end, that is, he gave a little shrug of his head and said to the Fox and the Cat:
“All right, let's go: I'll come with you.”
And off they went.
After walking for half a day they came to a town called “Catchfools”. As soon as he was inside the town, Pinocchio saw that all the streets were full of mangy dogs yawning with hunger, of shorn sheep shivering with cold, of hens left without combs or wattles, begging for the charity of a single grain of maize, of big butterflies that could no longer fly because they had sold their beautiful coloured wings, of peacocks with no tails at all, who were ashamed to be seen, and of pheasants creeping quietly about, mourning their glittering gold and silver feathers, now lost for ever.
Through the middle of this crowd of beggars and shamefaced poor folk, every now and then there passed some fine carriage with a Fox inside, or a thieving Magpie, or some nasty bird of prey.
“And where is the Field of Miracles?” asked Pinocchio.
“It's just a couple of steps from here.”
No sooner said than done: they crossed the town and, once outside the walls, they stopped in a lonely field that looked, more or less, like every other field.
“Here we are,” said the Fox to the puppet. “Now bend down to the ground, dig a little hole in the field with your hands, and put the gold pieces in it.”
Pinocchio obeyed. He dug the hole, put in the four gold pieces he had left, and then covered the hole over with a little earth.
“And now,” said the Fox, “go to the millstream near here, fetch a bucket of water, and water the ground where you have sown them.”
Pinocchio went to the millstream, and since he had no bucket to hand just then, he took off one of his slippers, filled it with water, and watered the earth that covered the hole. Then he asked:
“Is there anything else to do?”
“Nothing else,” answered the Fox. “Now we can go away. You come back here in twenty minutes or so, and you'll find the little tree already sprouted out of the ground, with its branches all loaded with coins.”
The poor puppet, beside himself with joy, thanked the Fox and the Cat a thousand times and promised them a splendid present.
“We don't want presents,” answered those two rogues. “It's enough for us to have taught you how to get rich without lifting a finger, and we're as happy as can be.”
That said, they took their leave of Pinocchio, wished him a good harvest, and went off about their business.