Ten Years Later Page 7

  Whilst the Comte de la Fere with Raoul visits the new buildings hehas had erected, and the new horses he has bought, with the reader'spermission we will lead him back to the city of Blois, and make him awitness of the unaccustomed activity which pervades that city.

  It was in the hotels that the surprise of the news brought by Raoul wasmost sensibly felt.

  In fact, the king and the court at Blois, that is to say, a hundredhorsemen, ten carriages, two hundred horses, as many lackeys asmasters--where was this crowd to be housed? Where were to be lodged allthe gentry of the neighborhood, who would gather in two or threehours after the news had enlarged the circle of its report, like theincreasing circumference produced by a stone thrown into a placid lake?

  Blois, as peaceful in the morning, as we have seen, as the calmest lakein the world, at the announcement of the royal arrival, was suddenlyfilled with the tumult and buzzing of a swarm of bees.

  All the servants of the castle, under the inspection of the officers,were sent into the city in quest of provisions, and ten horsemenwere dispatched to the preserves of Chambord to seek for game, to thefisheries of Beuvion for fish, and to the gardens of Chaverny for fruitsand flowers.

  Precious tapestries, and lusters with great gilt chains, were drawn fromthe cupboards; an army of the poor were engaged in sweeping the courtsand washing the stone fronts, whilst their wives went in droves to themeadows beyond the Loire, to gather green boughs and field-flowers. Thewhole city, not to be behind in this luxury of cleanliness, assumed itsbest toilette with the help of brushes, brooms, and water.

  The kennels of the upper town, swollen by these continued lotions,became rivers at the bottom of the city, and the pavement, generallyvery muddy, it must be allowed, took a clean face, and absolutely shonein the friendly rays of the sun.

  Next the music was to be provided; drawers were emptied; theshop-keepers did a glorious trade in wax, ribbons, and sword-knots;housekeepers laid in stores of bread, meat, and spices. Already numbersof the citizens whose houses were furnished as if for a siege, havingnothing more to do, donned their festive clothes and directed theircourse towards the city gate, in order to be the first to signal or seethe cortege. They knew very well that the king would not arrive beforenight, perhaps not before the next morning. Yet what is expectation buta kind of folly, and what is that folly but an excess of hope?

  In the lower city, at scarcely a hundred paces from the Castle of theStates, between the mall and the castle, in a sufficiently handsomestreet, then called Rue Vieille, and which must, in fact, have been veryold, stood a venerable edifice, with pointed gables, of squat but largedimensions, ornamented with three windows looking into the street on thefirst floor, with two in the second and with a little oeil de boeuf inthe third.

  On the sides of this triangle had recently been constructed aparallelogram of considerable size, which encroached upon the streetremorselessly, according to the familiar uses of the building of thatperiod. The street was narrowed by a quarter by it, but then the housewas enlarged by a half; and was not that a sufficient compensation?

  Tradition said that this house with the pointed gables was inhabited,in the time of Henry III., by a councilor of state whom Queen Catherinecame, some say to visit, and others to strangle. However that maybe, the good lady must have stepped with a circumspect foot over thethreshold of this building.

  After the councilor had died--whether by strangulation or naturally isof no consequence--the house had been sold, then abandoned, and lastlyisolated from the other houses of the street. Towards the middle of thereign of Louis XIII. only, an Italian, named Cropoli, escaped from thekitchens of the Marquis d'Ancre, came and took possession of thishouse. There he established a little hostelry, in which was fabricateda macaroni so delicious that people came from miles round to fetch it oreat it.

  So famous had the house become for it, that when Mary de Medici was aprisoner, as we know, in the castle of Blois, she once sent for some.

  It was precisely on the day she had escaped by the famous window. Thedish of macaroni was left upon the table, only just tasted by the royalmouth.

  This double favor, of a strangulation and a macaroni, conferred upon thetriangular house, gave poor Cropoli a fancy to grace his hostelry witha pompous title. But his quality of an Italian was no recommendation inthese times, and his small, well-concealed fortune forbade attractingtoo much attention.

  When he found himself about to die, which happened in 1643, just afterthe death of Louis XIII., he called to him his son, a young cookof great promise, and with tears in his eyes, he recommended him topreserve carefully the secret of the macaroni, to Frenchify his name,and at length, when the political horizon should be cleared from theclouds which obscured it--this was practiced then as in our day, toorder of the nearest smith a handsome sign, upon which a famous painter,whom he named, should design two queens' portraits, with these words asa legend: "To The Medici."

  The worthy Cropoli, after these recommendations, had only sufficienttime to point out to his young successor a chimney, under the slab ofwhich he had hidden a thousand ten-franc pieces, and then expired.

  Cropoli the younger, like a man of good heart, supported the loss withresignation, and the gain without insolence. He began by accustoming thepublic to sound the final i of his name so little, that by the aid ofgeneral complaisance, he was soon called nothing but M. Cropole, whichis quite a French name. He then married, having had in his eye a littleFrench girl, from whose parents he extorted a reasonable dowry byshowing them what there was beneath the slab of the chimney.

  These two points accomplished, he went in search of the painter who wasto paint the sign; and he was soon found. He was an old Italian, a rivalof the Raphaels and the Caracci, but an unfortunate rival. He said hewas of the Venetian school, doubtless from his fondness for color. Hisworks, of which he had never sold one, attracted the eye at a distanceof a hundred paces; but they so formidably displeased the citizens, thathe had finished by painting no more.

  He boasted of having painted a bath-room for Madame la Marechaled'Ancre, and mourned over this chamber having been burnt at the time ofthe marechal's disaster.

  Cropoli, in his character of a compatriot, was indulgent towardsPittrino, which was the name of the artist. Perhaps he had seen thefamous pictures of the bath-room. Be this as it may, he held in suchesteem, we may say in such friendship, the famous Pittrino, that he tookhim in his own house.

  Pittrino, grateful, and fed with macaroni, set about propagating thereputation of this national dish, and from the time of its founder,he had rendered, with his indefatigable tongue, signal services to thehouse of Cropoli.

  As he grew old he attached himself to the son as he had done to thefather, and by degrees became a kind of overlooker of a house in whichhis remarkable integrity, his acknowledged sobriety, and a thousandother virtues useless to enumerate, gave him an eternal place by thefireside, with a right of inspection over the domestics. Besides this,it was he who tasted the macaroni, to maintain the pure flavor of theancient tradition; and it must be allowed that he never permitted agrain of pepper too much, or an atom of parmesan too little. His joywas at its height on that day when called upon to share the secret ofCropoli the younger, and to paint the famous sign.

  He was seen at once rummaging with ardor in an old box, in which hefound 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 dela 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 thefashion of the Albanian, two goddesses rather than two queens. Theseillustrious ladies appeared so lovely on the sign,--they presentedto the astonished eyes such an assemblage of lilies and roses, theenchanting result of the change of style in Pittrino--they assumed theposes of sirens so Anacreont
ically--that the principal echevin, whenadmitted to view this capital piece in the salle of Cropole, at oncedeclared that these ladies were too handsome, of too animated a beauty,to figure as a sign in the eyes of passers-by.

  To Pittrino he added, "His royal highness, Monsieur, who often comesinto our city, will not be much pleased to see his illustrious mother soslightly clothed, and he will send you to the oubliettes of the state;for, remember, the heart of that glorious prince is not always tender.You must efface either the two sirens or the legend, without which Iforbid the exhibition of the sign. I say this for your sake, MasterCropole, as well as for yours, Signor Pittrino."

  What answer could be made to this? It was necessary to thank the echevinfor his kindness, which Cropole did. But Pittrino remained downcast andsaid he felt assured of what was about to happen.

  The visitor was scarcely gone when Cropole, crossing his arms, said:"Well, master, what is to be done?"

  "We must efface the legend," said Pittrino, in a melancholy tone. "Ihave some excellent ivory-black; it will be done in a moment, and wewill replace the Medici by the nymphs or the sirens, whichever youprefer."

  "No," said Cropole, "the will of my father must be carried out. Myfather considered----"

  "He considered the figures of the most importance," said Pittrino.

  "He thought most of the legend," said Cropole.

  "The proof of the importance in which he held the figures," saidPittrino, "is that he desired they should be likenesses, and they areso."

  "Yes; but if they had not been so, who would have recognized themwithout the legend? At the present day even, when the memory of theBlaisois begins to be faint with regard to these two celebrated persons,who would recognize Catherine and Mary without the words 'To theMedici'?"

  "But the figures?" said Pittrino, in despair; for he felt that youngCropole was right. "I should not like to lose the fruit of my labor."

  "And I should not wish you to be thrown into prison and myself into theoubliettes."

  "Let us efface 'Medici,'" said Pittrino, supplicatingly.

  "No," replied Cropole, firmly. "I have got an idea, a sublime idea--yourpicture shall appear, and my legend likewise. Does not 'Medici' meandoctor, or physician, in Italian?"

  "Yes, in the plural."

  "Well, then, you shall order another sign-frame of the smith; you shallpaint six physicians, and write underneath 'Aux Medici' which makes avery pretty play upon words."

  "Six physicians! impossible! And the composition?" cried Pittrino.

  "That is your business--but so it shall be--I insist upon it--it must beso--my macaroni is burning."

  This reasoning was peremptory--Pittrino obeyed. He composed the sign ofsix physicians, with the legend; the echevin applauded and authorizedit.

  The sign produced an extravagant success in the city, which proves thatpoetry has always been in the wrong, before citizens, as Pittrino said.

  Cropole, to make amends to his painter-in-ordinary, hung up the nymphsof the preceding sign in his bedroom, which made Madame Cropole blushevery time she looked at it, when she was undressing at night.

  This is the way in which the pointed-gable house got a sign; and thisis how the hostelry of the Medici, making a fortune, was found to beenlarged by a quarter, as we have described. And this is how there wasat Blois a hostelry of that name, and had for painter-in-ordinary MasterPittrino.

  CHAPTER 6. The Unknown.