“Don’t trust to those who promise to make you rich in a day.  Usually they are either mad or rogues!  Give ear to me, and go back, my boy.”

“On the contrary, I am determined to go on.”

“The hour is late!”

“I am determined to go on.”

“The night is dark!”

“I am determined to go on.”

“The road is dangerous!”

“I am determined to go on.”

“Remember that boys who are bent on following their caprices, and will have their own way, sooner or later repent it.”

“Always the same stories.  Good-night, Cricket.”

“Good-night, Pinocchio, and may Heaven preserve you from dangers and from assassins.”

No sooner had he said these words than the Talking-Cricket vanished suddenly like a light that has been blown out, and the road became darker than ever.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIV

PINOCCHIO FALLS AMONGST ASSASSINS

“Really,” said the puppet to himself, as he resumed his journey, “how unfortunate we poor boys are.  Everybody scolds us and gives us good advice.  See now; because I don’t choose to listen to that tiresome Cricket, who knows, according to him, how many misfortunes are to happen to me!  I am even to meet with assassins!  That is, however, of little consequence, for I don’t believe in assassins—­I have never believed in them.  For me, I think that assassins have been invented purposely by papas to frighten boys who want to go out at night.  Besides, supposing I was to come across them here in the road, do you imagine they would frighten me?  Not the least in the world.  I should go to meet them and cry:  ’Gentlemen assassins, what do you want with me?  Remember that with me there is no joking.  Therefore go about your business and be quiet!’ At this speech they would run away like the wind.  If, however, they were so badly educated as not to run away, why, then I would run away myself and there would be an end of it.”

But Pinocchio had not time to finish his reasoning, for at that moment he thought that he heard a slight rustle of leaves behind him.

He turned to look and saw in the gloom two evil-looking black figures completely enveloped in charcoal sacks.  They were running after him on tiptoe and making great leaps like two phantoms.

“Here they are in reality!” he said to himself and, not knowing where to hide his gold pieces, he put them in his mouth precisely under his tongue.

Then he tried to escape.  But he had not gone a step when he felt himself seized by the arm and heard two horrid, sepulchral voices saying to him: 

“Your money or your life!”

Pinocchio, not being able to answer in words, owing to the money that was in his mouth, made a thousand low bows and a thousand pantomimes.  He tried thus to make the two muffled figures, whose eyes were only visible through the holes in their sacks, understand that he was a poor puppet, and that he had not as much as a counterfeit nickel in his pocket.