never to compel her to appear on the stage. This is a promise which all
actors make to the young girls they marry, and which they never fulfil,
simply because their wives never care much about claiming from them the
performance of it. Moreover, it turned out a very fortunate thing for my
mother that she had studied for the stage, for nine years later, having
been left a widow with six children, she could not have brought them up
if it had not been for the resources she found in that profession.

I was only one year old when my father left me to go to London, where he
had an engagement. It was in that great city that my mother made her
first appearance on the stage, and in that city likewise that she gave
birth to my brother Francois, a celebrated painter of battles, now
residing in Vienna, where he has followed his profession since 1783.

Towards the end of the year 1728 my mother returned to Venice with her
husband, and as she had become an actress she continued her artistic
life. In 1730 she was delivered of my brother Jean, who became Director
of the Academy of painting at Dresden, and died there in 1795; and during
the three following years she became the mother of two daughters, one of
whom died at an early age, while the other married in Dresden, where she
still lived in 1798. I had also a posthumous brother, who became a
priest; he died in Rome fifteen years ago.

Let us now come to the dawn of my existence in the character of a
thinking being.

The organ of memory began to develop itself in me at the beginning of
August, 1733. I had at that time reached the age of eight years and four
months. Of what may have happened to me before that period I have not the
faintest recollection. This is the circumstance.