It lost many of its original qualities, and served for the most part only to bestow an unconquerable vigor, which kept the family from extinction, and enabled them to make their own part good throughout the perils and rude emergencies of their interminable descent.

In the constant wars with which Italy was plagued, by the dissensions of her petty states and republics, there was a demand for native hardihood.
The successive members of the Monte Beni family showed valor and policy enough' at all events, to keep their hereditary possessions out of the clutch of grasping neighbors, and probably differed very little from the other feudal barons with whom they fought and feasted.

Such a degree of conformity with the manners of the generations through which it survived, must have been essential to the prolonged continuance of the race.
It is well known, however, that any hereditary peculiarity--as a supernumerary finger, or an anomalous shape of feature, like the Austrian lip--is wont to show itself in a family after a very wayward fashion.

It skips at its own pleasure along the line, and, latent for half a century or so, crops out again in a great-grandson.

And thus, it was said, from a period beyond memory or record, there had ever and anon been a descendant of the Monte Benis bearing nearly all the characteristics that were attributed to the original founder of the race.