I shall perhaps have wearied my readers with these facts about my pedigree and birth. Satirists will not, however, find in them anything to excite ambition in myself or to wing their pen with ridicule. Social ranks have always been regarded by me as accidental, though necessary for the proper subordination on which our institutions depend. As for my birth, I think less of whence I came than of whither I am going. Conduct unworthy of a decent origin might cause sorrow to my deceased parents, whose memory I hold in honour, and might cover myself and all my posterity with shame.
My name is Carlo. I was the sixth child born by my mother into the light, or shall I say the shadows of this world. I am writing on the last day of April in the year 1780. I have passed fifty, and not yet reached the age of sixty.[103] I shall not put the sacristan to trouble in order to view the register of my baptism, being quite sure that I was christened, and not having the stupid vanity to pass for a curled dandy. That is obvious, and has been always obvious, from the fashion of my clothes and the way I dress my hair. Besides, I set no value on the age of men. Human beings die at all ages; and I have seen boys who are adult, while grown-up men or grey-beards are often nothing better than peevish and ridiculous children.
_My Education and Circumstances down to the Age of Sixteen--Concerning the Art of Improvisation, and my Literary Studies._
Our family consisted of eleven children, male and female. I could record nothing but what is creditable of my brothers and sisters, had I proposed to write their memoirs. But this is not my thought; and they are capable of writing their own, if the whim should take them; for the epidemic of literature was always chronic in our household.
A succession of priests with little learning were our domestic pedagogues up to a certain age. I say a succession advisedly; each in turn having earned his dismissal by impertinent behaviour and intrigues with the serving-maids.
From early childhood I was always a silent observer of men and things, by no means insolent, of imperturbable serenity, and extremely attentive to my lessons. My brothers used my taciturn and peaceable temper to their own advantage. They accused me to our common tutor of all the naughtinesses of which they had been guilty. I did not condescend to excuse myself or to accuse them, but bore my unjust punishments with stoicism. I venture to affirm that no boy was ever more supremely indifferent than I was to the terrible penalty of being sent away from table just as we were sitting down to dinner. Smiling obedience was my only self-defence. Enemies may conclude from these traits of character that I was a stupid lout, and friends that I was a philosopher in embryo. Nothing is rarer than the eye of equal justice. Yet any one who takes the trouble to inquire of my acquaintances and servants, will learn that my taciturnity, my tolerance, my stoical endurance, have not changed with years--that I continue to view the events of this life with a smile, and that only those have nettled me which touched my honour.