"You will either answer or I will give you two kisses with the shovel on your right cheeks and two on your left."

"'Talian pigs! Brigands!"

"May you be skinned alive! To call me a brigand! Me! Pinocchio, which creature is this, Spitz or Spotz?"

"Franz."

"Listen, Franz, if you dare insult me another time, I'll untie your hands and then I'll give you so many boxes on your ear that'll make you more of an imbecile than your emperor."

"You kill us, we die mouths shut."

"We, we ... Wait before you talk in the plural; wait till I put this red-hot shovel to Stolz's ear, and then ..."

Ciampanella came closer to the Croat, armed with his other heated iron, but suddenly he felt a blow on his eye which half blinded him.

"... they can ..."

He couldn't finish because Pinocchio burst out laughing so wildly that he had to hold his stomach. Ciampanella, who had been taken unaware by the gla.s.s of water Pinocchio had thrown at him, let out all his anger on him.

"Youngster, look out for yourself. I won't stand nonsense from you. I owe to our enemies the respect enjoined by regulations, but you I can take by the nape of the neck and set you down on the stove, and I'll roast you as if you were beef."

Pinocchio became suddenly serious and began to swing his wooden leg so nervously that if Major Cutemup had seen him he would have turned as yellow as a Chinaman with fear. If the descendant of Romulus and Remus had had the slightest idea of the kick which menaced him at this moment he would have grown calm as if by magic. But Pinocchio, who had seen Franz and Stolz exchange sly glances and a smile full of irony, held himself in and, after scratching his head solemnly, approached Ciampanella, who was wiping his eye with his ap.r.o.n, and taking hold affectionately of his arm, said:

"So you want to roast me on your stove?"

"As I told you."

"Wouldn't it be better to cook something on it for our supper this evening?"

"This evening's supper? But you know that this evening I wouldn't light the fire if the commander-in-chief came in person to command me to. When the company is in action I am free to do what I want, and when I am free to do what I want I don't do anything. So if you are hungry you'll have to eat bread and compressed meat, and if you don't like it you'll have to fast."

"Listen, Ciampanella; you reason like Menenius Agrippa, who was an ancient Roman able to make things clearer than modern Romans, but sometimes you get tangled up in your premises."

"Listen, youngster, don't insult me, because as sure as Ciampanella is my name I will wring your neck like a chicken's."

"But I'm not insulting you."

"Then tell me what kind of things are _premises_; otherwise ..."

"Otherwise you'll take me and make me sit on the stove and roast me, won't you? That proves that the fire is lighted and that the charcoal is burning for nothing, and so if, for example, the commander-in-chief should pay you a visit he would give you a fortnight's imprisonment for it, because when the company's in action you are free to do what you want, but not in the kitchen, and if you are hungry you must eat bread and compressed meat or fast."

"Heh, youngster! I didn't light the stove for culinary purposes, but for strategic reasons. It was to make these two beasts talk."

"But they haven't talked."

"We'll fling them out and let the mad dogs eat them."

"But if you, instead of heating the shovel and tongs, had roasted a young pullet and served it with one of those famous sauces ..."

"Chicken in the Roman style with potato puffs ..."

"Just look at Stolz. He's licking his greased whiskers as if the potatoes were cooking under his nose."

"Look at Franz gaping."

"They have a dog's hunger, and in order to make them sing ..."

"You want me to cook a little supper such as I can cook if I set myself to it, stick it under their noses, and ... Youngster, that's a magnificent idea! When I write my _Manual of War Cookery_ I'll put you on the frontispiece as the first of kitchen strategians. Leave things to me and in half an hour I'll hand you out a couple of stews that would raise up the dead better even than Garibaldi's Hymn!"

Pinocchio heaved a sigh. He had won such a battle that, if he had been a German, would have caused the people to hammer I don't know how many nails into his statue. While Ciampanella was bustling about on all sides, plucking two young fowls, peeling potatoes, frying lard and onions, melting b.u.t.ter in a saucepan, preparing a stew in another, Pinocchio was striding up and down the kitchen, long and narrow as a corridor, eying stealthily the two prisoners, who were beginning to show signs of a growing restlessness. They had been fasting for more than twenty-four hours and their last food had been such a mess that it might have been requisitioned from the poultry-yard and the stable.

Ciampanella seemed eager to surpa.s.s himself. He hovered over his pots without paying any attention to Pinocchio, but talking in a loud voice as if he wished to impart a lesson in cookery to half the world.

"Listen, youngster, when you want to eat two savory young fowls you must cook them in the Roman fashion according to Ciampanella's recipe, which, when it is written down, will not have its equal in _Urbis et Orbis_. I call it the Roman fashion, but it might also truly be called the Ostrogothic fashion ... but that's the way. Take two young fowls and cut them into pieces, put a good-sized lump of b.u.t.ter into a saucepan and a little onion and fry it a little; dredge the fowls with flour, and put them to simmer in the b.u.t.ter; when they are browned put in some tomato paste, salt and pepper, and let them cook down, later a grain of nutmeg, cover it and let it cook.... Do you smell that odor, youngster? And just think how it will taste! You'll lick your napkin like that dirty Croat who ... Ho! ho! look at his tongue hanging out.... Ho! ho! ho!"

The air was filled with a fragrance so entrancing that it would have given an appet.i.te to the mouth of a letter-box; so imagine how the miserable two felt, who, after all, were men of flesh and blood and had no other defect than of having been born under the Executioner's scepter. Stolz with his mouth wide open breathed in the air in deep breaths, tasting it hungrily as if he could really taste the odor that tickled his nostrils. Ciampanella stepped in front of him, and spouted out one of his special speeches, gesticulating with his fork.

"Well, Mr. Croat? How do you think we do it? Franz Joe is worse off than the least of our Alpine troops, because we are not reduced to gnawing bones like you who make war in order to fish, as the proverb says, in troubled waters. What a delicious odor, isn't it? But don't stand there with your mouth open or I'll fill it with dish-water.

Here's some!"

"'Talian pig!" howled Stolz, half strangled with nausea and disgust, spitting all around.

"If you call me an Italian pig again, I'll break your head in spite of the respect they teach us is due the enemy, because in this world it is t.i.t for tat."

"Listen, Ciampanella," Pinocchio interrupted at the right moment, "if the chickens are done we could sit down at the table and offer a bite to Stolz."

"That's a good idea, youngster."

While the boy was setting the table and the chef was dishing up the stew, from the distance came several tremendous rumblings, which brought a smile to the faces of the prisoners, who exchanged significant glances. The sound came from our six-inch guns that had been dragged with such effort to the alt.i.tude of nine thousand feet and arrived the day before by way of the _filovia_, which were now opening fire on the enemy's trenches. If Franz and Stolz had had even the faintest suspicion of this they would have changed their expressions.

"Dear Ciampanella, as a cook you should be put on the pedestal of a monument. This chicken is a masterpiece. If that imbecile of a Stolz, instead of standing there like a dog with his tongue hanging out, a foot away from the tail of a hare, could give a lick to this drumstick, I wager he would desert his emperor and demand Italian citizenship."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"For my part, I'd rather give him the chicken than the citizenship."

"I would as lief have it," Stolz risked saying, pa.s.sing his tongue over his whiskers.

"I guess so."

"And I'll give you not only a drumstick, but half a chicken with gravy and a loaf of bread to go with it, if you'll tell me ..."

"We can't talk; don't want to betray our country."

"Dear Stolz, you're a fine fellow, but if you can't talk I can't give you anything to eat and we are quits. But I haven't asked you to betray either Croatia, or even Hungary, if you are afraid of Franz's hearing you."

"Oh, he speaks only Magyar."