others of about the same dimensions were placed in order according to
their dates. It seemed as if each period had left its mark upon those of
the personages it had seen live and die, and had left something of its
own character there.

There were more gallant cavaliers cut after the same pattern as the
first. Their stern, harsh faces, red beards, and broad, square military
shoulders told that by swordthrusts and broken lances they had founded
the nobility of their race. An heroic preface to this family biography!
A rough and warlike page of the Middle Ages! After these proud
men-of-arms came several figures of a less ferocious aspect, but not
so imposing. In these portraits of the fifteenth century beards had
disappeared with the sword. In those wearing caps and velvet toques,
silk robes and heavy gold chains supporting a badge of the same metal,
one recognized lords in full and tranquil possession of the fiefs won
by their fathers, landowners who had degenerated a little and preferred
mountain life in a manor to the chances of a more hazardous existence.
These pacific gentlemen were, for the most part, painted with the left
hand gloved and resting upon the hip; the right one was bare, a sort of
token of disarmament which one might take for a painter's epigram.
Some of them had allowed their favorite dogs to share the honors of the
picture. All in this group indicated that this branch of the family had
many points of resemblance with the more illustrious faces. It was the
period of idle kings.

A half dozen solemn personages with gold-braided hats and long red robes
bordered with ermine, and wearing starched ruffles, occupied one corner
of the parlor near the windows. These worthy advisers of the Dukes
of Lorraine explained the way in which the masters of the chateau had
awakened from the torpor in which they had been plunged for several
generations, in order to participate in the affairs of their country and
enter a more active sphere.

Here the portraits assumed the proportions of history. Did not this
branch, descended from warlike stock, seem like a fragment taken from
the European annals? Was it not a symbolical image of the progress
of civilization, of regular legislation struggling against barbaric
customs? Thanks to these respectable counsellors and judges, one might
reverse the motto: 'Non solum toga', in favor of their race. But it did
not seem as if these bearded ancestors looked with much gratitude upon
t