quality of an Italian was no recommendation in these times,
and his small, well-concealed fortune forbade attracting too
much attention.
When he found himself about to die, which happened in 1643,
just after the death of Louis XIII., he called to him his
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Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later
son, a young cook of great promise, and with tears in his
eyes, he recommended him to preserve carefully the secret of
the macaroni, to Frenchify his name, and at length, when the
political horizon should be cleared from the clouds which
obscured it — this was practiced then as in our day, to
order of the nearest smith a handsome sign, upon which a
famous painter, whom he named, should design two queens’
portraits, with these words as a legend: “To The Medici.”
The worthy Cropoli, after these recommendations, had only
sufficient time to point out to his young successor a
chimney, under the slab of which he had hidden a thousand
ten-franc pieces, and then expired.
Cropoli the younger, like a man of good heart, supported the
loss with resignation, and the gain without insolence. He
began by accustoming the public to sound the final i of his
name so little, that by the aid of general complaisance, he
was soon called nothing but M. Cropole, which is quite a
French name. He then married, having had in his eye a little
French girl, from whose parents he extorted a reasonable
dowry by showing them what there was beneath the slab of the
chimney.
These two points accomplished, he went in search of the
painter who was to paint the sign; and he was soon found. He
was an old Italian, a rival of the Raphaels and the Caracci,
but an unfortunate rival. He said he was of the Venetian
school, doubtless from his fondness for color. His works, of
which he had never sold one, attracted the eye at a distance
of a hundred paces; but they so formidably displeased the
citizens, that he had finished by painting no more.
He boasted of having painted a bath-room for Madame la
Marechale d’Ancre, and mourned over this chamber having been
burnt at the time of the marechal’s disaster.
Cropoli, in his character of a compatriot, was indulgent
towards Pittrino, which was the name of the artist. Perhaps
he had seen the famous pictures of the bath-room. Be this as
it may, he held in such esteem, we may say in such
friendship, the famous Pittrino, that he took him in his own
house.
Pittrino, grateful, and fed with macaroni, set about
propagating the reputation of this national dish, and from
the time of its founder, he had rendered, with his
indefatigable tongue, signal services to the house of
Cropoli.
As he grew old he attached himself to the son as he had done
to the father, and by degrees became a kind of overlooker of
a house in which his remarkable integrity, his acknowledged
sobriety, and a thousand other virtues useless to enumerate,
gave him an eternal place by the fireside, with a right of
inspection over the domestics. Besides this, it was he who
tasted the macaroni, to maintain the pure flavor of the
ancient tradition; and it must be allowed that he never
permitted a grain of pepper too much, or an atom of parmesan
too little. His joy was at its height on that day when
called upon to share the secret of Cropoli the younger, and
to paint the famous sign.
He was seen at once rummaging with ardor in an old box, in
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Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later
which he found some brushes, a little gnawed by the rats,
but still passable; some colors in bladders almost dried up;
some linseed-oil in a bottle, and a palette which had
formerly belonged to Bronzino, that dieu de la pittoure, as
the ultramontane artist, in his ever young enthusiasm,
always called him.
Pittrino was puffed up with all the joy of a rehabilitation.
He did as Raphael had done — he changed his style, and
painted, in the fashion of the Albanian, two goddesses
rather than two queens. These illustrious ladies appeared so