My mother's tender caresses and my father's smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me are my first recollections.

I was their plaything and their idol, and something better--their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me.

With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life, added to the active spirit of tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me.

For a long time I was their only care.

My mother had much desired to have a daughter, but I continued their single offspring.
When I was about five years old, while making an excursion beyond the frontiers of Italy, they passed a week on the shores of the Lake of Como.