Pale, middle-aged, not robust. Moves openly and swiftly but not wild. Intellectual and quickly delighted.

A good body unexercised. A studious unhappy face lit by the fire of banked down appetite. He is an academic, hounded by self-doubt to enter the world of affairs, and longing to be rescued from himself.

Heavy, active, a sportsman and soldier held together by rigid adherence to the minimal code of conventional duty. Attractively aware of his moral and intellectual insignificance, but also a great nobleman, untouchablly convinced that his acts and ideas are important because they are his.

Born into the merchant class, now a great lady, she is absurd at a distance, impressive close to. Overdressed, coursely fashioned, she worships society; brace, hot-headed, she worships her husband. In consequence, troubled by and defiant towards both.

A beautiful girl of ardent moral fineness; she both suffers and shelters behind a reserved stillness which it is her father's care to mitigate.

Subtle and serious; the face expressing not inner tension but the tremendous outgoing will of the Renaissance. A self-conceit that can cradle gross crimes in the name of effective actoin. In sort an intellectual bully.

A professional diplomat and lay ecclesiastic. Much on his dignity as a man of the world he in fact trots happily along a mental footpath as narrow as a peasant's.

An apprentice diplomat of good family.

A stiff body and an immobile face. Little imagination, moderate brain, but an all consuming rectitude which is his cross, his solace and his hobby.

NOT the Holbein Henry, but a much younger man, clean-shaven, bright-eyed, graceful and athletic. The Golden Hope of the New Learning throughout Europe. Only the levity with which he handles his absolute power foreshadows his future corruption.

Self-opinionated, self-righteous, selfish, indignant.

Sharp-minded, sharp-faced. He treats the Church as a job of administration and theology as a set of devices, for he lacks personal religiousity.