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.