This is all I have found in my father's diary: from my mother's lips I
have heard the following particulars:

Gaetan-Joseph-Jacques left his family, madly in love with an actress
named Fragoletta, who performed the chambermaids. In his poverty, he
determined to earn a living by making the most of his own person. At
first he gave himself up to dancing, and five years afterwards became an
actor, making himself conspicuous by his conduct still more than by his
talent.

Whether from fickleness or from jealousy, he abandoned the Fragoletta,
and joined in Venice a troop of comedians then giving performances at the
Saint-Samuel Theatre. Opposite the house in which he had taken his
lodging resided a shoemaker, by name Jerome Farusi, with his wife Marzia,
and Zanetta, their only daughter--a perfect beauty sixteen years of age.
The young actor fell in love with this girl, succeeded in gaining her
affection, and in obtaining her consent to a runaway match. It was the
only way to win her, for, being an actor, he never could have had
Marzia's consent, still less Jerome's, as in their eyes a player was a
most awful individual. The young lovers, provided with the necessary
certificates and accompanied by two witnesses, presented themselves
before the Patriarch of Venice, who performed over them the marriage
ceremony. Marzia, Zanetta's mother, indulged in a good deal of
exclamation, and the father died broken-hearted.

I was born nine months afterwards, on the 2nd of April, 1725.

The following April my mother left me under the care of her own mother,
who had forgiven her as soon as she had heard that my father had promised