IX
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Sadi and Ross, James
They have related in the books of philosophers that scorpions are not brought forth according to the common course of nature, as other animals are, but that they eat their way through their mother's wombs, tear open their bellies, and thus make themselves a passage into the world; and that the fragments of skin which we find in scorpions' holes corroborate this fact. On one occasion I was stating this strange event to a good and great man, when he answered: "My heart is bearing testimony to the truth of this remark; nor can it be otherwise, for as they have thus behaved towards their parents in their youth, so they are approved and beloved in their riper years." On his death-bed a father exhorted his son, saying: "O generous youth, keep in mind this maxim: 'Whoever is ungrateful to his own kindred cannot hope that fortune shall befriend him.'"