Ten Years Later by Dumas, Alexandre. Part one

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

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