sunset of one day to sunset of the next-twenty-four hours.

Note 3. Benvenuto means Welcome.



IV

ANDREA CELLINI was yet alive when I was about three years old, and he
had passed his hundredth. One day they had been altering a certain
conduit pertaining to a cistern, and there issued from it a great
scorpion unperceived by them, which crept down from the cistern to the
ground, and slank away beneath a bench. I saw it, and ran up to it, and
laid my hands upon it. It was so big that when I had it in my little
hands, it put out its tail on one side, and on the other thrust forth
both its mouths. [1] They relate that I ran in high joy to my
grandfather, crying out: "Look, grandpapa, at my pretty little crab."
When he recognised that the creature was a scorpion, he was on the point
of falling dead for the great fear he had and anxiety about me. He
coaxed and entreated me to give it him; but the more he begged, the
tighter I clasped it, crying and saying I would not give it to any one.
My father, who was also in the house, ran up when he heard my screams,
and in his stupefaction could not think how to prevent the venomous
animal from killing me. Just then his eyes chanced to fall upon a pair
of scissors; and so, while soothing and caressing me, he cut its tail
and mouths off. Afterwards, when the great peril had been thus averted,
he took the occurrence for a good augury.

When I was about five years old my father happened to be in a
basement-chamber of our house, where they had been washing, and where a