First Sentence

"WE have done with that elder branch of the family which in the course of a hundred and ninety years, beginning from the humble position they occupied in the time of Giovanni di Bicci, in the second generation had created a new epoch for Florence, in the fourth had directed the politics of all Italy, in the fifth had swayed the destinies of Europe, and in the seventh had seated its last descendant on the throne of a Queen of France, and governed that country through thirty years of a most troubled time."