It was on the 13th of May, 1792, that Pius IX was born, in the Umbrian seaport of Sinigaglia, in the Papal States. His father, Count Mastai-Ferretti, was the descendant of a long line of noblemen who had come thither from Crema in Lombardy towards the end of the Fourteenth Century. Home-loving but public-spirited men they had been, and for a long time their fellow-citizens had confided to them the chief interests of the town, one of the family always filling the office of Mayor, which had thereby become practically hereditary, to the advantage and convenience of all concerned. So Count Mastai was Mayor of his native city at the time that his youngest son came to make the eighth in the house already filled with the laughter and play of three sons and four daughters. The mother of this large family was Caterina Solazzo, one of those noble ladies of whom there were yet so many in Italy when I was a child—a woman of high education and devout soul, who saw in her maternal duties the highest honour to which woman could aspire, and fulfilled them with whole-hearted joy and ardour. That meant work such as the modern woman, who thinks she is an example to toilers for the benefit of the race, would shrink from; the Countess had to rise very early so that she should be the first to approach her children’s bedsides when the rising sun woke the nursery to the frolic and laughter of a new day, and from that moment till all were tucked up and asleep at night she never let them out of her sight. The first words they had ever spoken were the Holy Names, the first conscious movement of each baby hand had been trained to make the sign of the Cross.