Ces deux messieurs, qui sont absens,
                    Nous sont chers e bien des manieres;
                    Ce sont nos amiss, nos amans,
                    Ce sont nos maris et nos freres,
                    Et les peres de ces enfans.

                    These absent ones, who just claim
                    Our hearts, by every tender name,
                    To whom each wish extends
                    Our husbands and our brothers are,
                    The fathers of this blooming pair,
                    Our lovers and our friends.]

of my mother attracted a number of admirers, among whom Mons. de la Closure, Resident of France, was the most assiduous in his attentions.  His passion must have been extremely violent, since after a period of thirty years I have seen him affected at the very mention of her name.  My mother had a defence more powerful even than her virtue; she tenderly loved my father, and conjured him to return; his inclination seconding his request, he gave up every prospect of emolument, and hastened to Geneva.

I was the unfortunate fruit of this return, being born ten months after, in a very weakly and infirm state; my birth cost my mother her life, and was the first of my misfortunes.  I am ignorant how my father supported her loss at that time, but I know he was ever after inconsolable.  In me he still thought he saw her he so tenderly lamented, but could never forget I had been the innocent cause of his misfortune, nor did he ever embrace me, but his sighs, the convulsive pressure of his arms, witnessed that a bitter regret mingled itself with his caresses, though, as may be supposed, they were not on this account less ardent.  When he said to me, “Jean Jacques, let us talk of your mother,” my usual reply was, “Yes, father, but then, you know, we shall cry,” and immediately the tears started from his eyes.  “Ah!” exclaimed he, with agitation, “Give me back my wife; at least console me for her loss; fill up, dear boy, the void she has left in my soul.  Could I love thee thus wert thou only my son?” Forty years after this loss he expired in the arms of his second wife, but the name of the first still vibrated on his lips, still was her image engraved on his heart.

Such were the authors of my being:  of all the gifts it had pleased Heaven to bestow on them, a feeling heart was the only one that descended to me; this had been the source of their felicity, it was the foundation of all my misfortunes.