entury 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 this
parliamentary flower added to their feudal crest. They appeared to look
down from the height of their worm-eaten frames upon their enrobed
descendants with that disdainful smile with which the peers of France
used to greet men of law the first time they were called to sit by their
side, after being for so long a time at their feet.

In the space between the windows and upon the remaining woodwork was a
crowd of military men, with here and there an Abbe with cross and mitre,
a Commander of Malta, and a solemn Canon, sterile branches of this
genealogical tree. Several among the military ones wore sashes and plumes
of the colors of Lorraine; others, even before the union of this province
to F