do not come spontaneously, and one might almost say that it is not the
mind that directs the pen, but the pen leads the mind into common,
empty artificiality. I am afraid of this for myself, for if I am
wanting in eloquence, literary simplicity, or picturesqueness, I am
not wanting in good taste, and my own style might become distasteful
to myself, and thereby render my task impossible. But this I shall see
later on. I begin my diary with a short introductory autobiography.

My name is Leon Ploszowski, and I am, as I said before, thirty-five
years of age. I come from a wealthy family which has been able to
preserve its fortune. As to myself I shall not increase it, and at the
same time I am not likely to squander it. My position is such that
there is no necessity for me to enter into competition with struggling
humanity. As to expensive and ruinous pleasures, I am a sceptic who
knows how much they are worth, or rather, knows that they are not
worth anything.

My mother died a week after I was born. My father, who loved her
more than his life, became affected with melancholia. Even after he
recovered from this, at Vienna, he did not wish to return to his
estates, as the memories associated with them rent his very soul; he
left Ploszow under the care of his sister, my aunt, and betook himself
in the year 1848 to Rome, which, during thirty-odd years, he never
left once, so as to be near my mother's tomb. I forgot to mention that
he brought her remains to Rome, and buried her on the Campo Santo.

We have our own house on the Babuino, called Casa Osoria, from our
coat of arms. It looks more like a museum than anything else, as
my father possesses no mean collections, especially from the early
Christian times. In these collections his whole life is now absorbed.