Whilst the Comte de la Fere with Raoul visits the newbuildings he has had erected, and the new horses he hasbought, with the reader's permission we will lead him backto the city of Blois, and make him a witness of theunaccustomed activity which pervades that city.

It was in the hotels that the surprise of the news broughtby Raoul was most sensibly felt.

In fact, the king and the court at Blois, that is to say, ahundred horsemen, ten carriages, two hundred horses, as manylackeys as masters - where was this crowd to be housed?Where were to be lodged all the gentry of the neighborhood,who would gather in two or three hours after the news hadenlarged the circle of its report, like the increasingcircumference produced by a stone thrown into a placid lake?

Blois, as peaceful in the morning, as we have seen, as thecalmest lake in the world, at the announcement of the royalarrival, was suddenly filled with the tumult and buzzing ofa swarm of bees.

All the servants of the castle, under the inspection of theofficers, were sent into the city in quest of provisions,and ten horsemen were dispatched to the preserves ofChambord to seek for game, to the fisheries of Beuvion forfish, and to the gardens of Chaverny for fruits and flowers.

Precious tapestries, and lusters with great gilt chains,were drawn from the cupboards; an army of the poor wereengaged in sweeping the courts and washing the stone fronts,whilst their wives went in droves to the meadows beyond theLoire, to gather green boughs and field-flowers. The wholecity, not to be behind in this luxury of cleanliness,assumed its best toilette with the help of brushes, brooms,and water.

The kennels of the upper town, swollen by these continuedlotions, became rivers at the bottom of the city, and thepavement, generally very muddy, it must be allowed, took aclean face, and absolutely shone in the friendly rays of thesun.

Next the music was to be provided; drawers were emptied; theshop-keepers did a glorious trade in wax, ribbons, andsword-knots; housekeepers laid in stores of bread, meat, andspices. Already numbers of the citizens whose houses werefurnished as if for a siege, having nothing more to do,donned their festive clothes and directed their coursetowards the city gate, in order to be the first to signal orsee the cortege. They knew very well that the king would notarrive before night, perhaps not before the next morning.Yet what is expectation but a kind of folly, and what isthat folly but an excess of hope?

In the lower city, at scarcely a hundred paces from theCastle of the States, between the mall and the castle, in asufficiently handsome street, then called Rue Vieille, andwhich must, in fact, have been very old, stood a venerableedifice, with pointed gables, of squat but large dimensions,ornamented with three windows looking into the street on thefirst floor, with two in the second and with a little oeilde boeuf in the third.

On the sides of this triangle had recently been constructeda parallelogram of considerable size, which encroached uponthe street remorselessly, according to the familiar uses ofthe building of that period. The street was narrowed by aquarter by it, but then the house was enlarged by a half;and was not that a sufficient compensation?

Tradition said that this house with the pointed gables wasinhabited, in the time of Henry III., by a councilor ofstate whom Queen Catherine came, some say to visit, andothers to strangle. However that may be, the good lady musthave stepped with a circumspect foot over the threshold ofthis building.

After the councilor had died - whether by strangulation ornaturally is of no consequence - the house had been sold,then abandoned, and lastly isolated from the other houses ofthe street. Towards the middle of the reign of Louis XIII.only, an Italian, named Cropoli, escaped from the kitchensof the Marquis d'Ancre, came and took possession of thishouse. There he established a little hostelry, in which wasfabricated a macaroni so delicious that people came frommiles round to fetch it or eat it.

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

It was precisely on the day she had escaped by the famouswindow. The dish of macaroni was left upon the table, onlyjust tasted by the royal mouth.

This double favor, of a strangulation and a macaroni,conferred upon the triangular house, gave poor Cropoli afancy to grace his hostelry with a pompous title. But hisquality of an Italian was no recommendation in these times,and his small, well-concealed fortune forbade attracting toomuch attention.

When he found himself about to die, which happened in 1643,just after the death of Louis XIII., he called to him hisson, a young cook of great promise, and with tears in hiseyes, he recommended him to preserve carefully the secret ofthe macaroni, to Frenchify his name, and at length, when thepolitical horizon should be cleared from the clouds whichobscured it - this was practiced then as in our day, toorder of the nearest smith a handsome sign, upon which afamous 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 onlysufficient time to point out to his young successor achimney, under the slab of which he had hidden a thousandten-franc pieces, and then expired.

Cropoli the younger, like a man of good heart, supported theloss with resignation, and the gain without insolence. Hebegan by accustoming the public to sound the final i of hisname so little, that by the aid of general complaisance, hewas soon called nothing but M. Cropole, which is quite aFrench name. He then married, having had in his eye a littleFrench girl, from whose parents he extorted a reasonabledowry by showing them what there was beneath the slab of thechimney.

These two points accomplished, he went in search of thepainter who was to paint the sign; and he was soon found. Hewas an old Italian, a rival of the Raphaels and the Caracci,but an unfortunate rival. He said he was of the Venetianschool, doubtless from his fondness for color. His works, ofwhich he had never sold one, attracted the eye at a distanceof a hundred paces; but they so formidably displeased thecitizens, that he had finished by painting no more.

He boasted of having painted a bath-room for Madame laMarechale d'Ancre, and mourned over this chamber having beenburnt at the time of the marechal's disaster.

Cropoli, in his character of a compatriot, was indulgenttowards Pittrino, which was the name of the artist. Perhapshe had seen the famous pictures of the bath-room. Be this asit may, he held in such esteem, we may say in suchfriendship, the famous Pittrino, that he took him in his ownhouse.

Pittrino, grateful, and fed with macaroni, set aboutpropagating the reputation of this national dish, and fromthe time of its founder, he had rendered, with hisindefatigable tongue, signal services to the house ofCropoli.

As he grew old he attached himself to the son as he had doneto the father, and by degrees became a kind of overlooker ofa house in which his remarkable integrity, his acknowledgedsobriety, and a thousand other virtues useless to enumerate,gave him an eternal place by the fireside, with a right ofinspection over the domestics. Besides this, it was he whotasted the macaroni, to maintain the pure flavor of theancient tradition; and it must be allowed that he neverpermitted a grain of pepper too much, or an atom of parmesantoo little. His joy was at its height on that day whencalled upon to share the secret of Cropoli the younger, andto paint the famous sign.

He was seen at once rummaging with ardor in an old box, inwhich 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 hadformerly belonged to Bronzino, that dieu de la pittoure, asthe 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, andpainted, in the fashion of the Albanian, two goddessesrather than two queens. These illustrious ladies appeared solovely on the sign, - they presented to the astonished eyessuch an assemblage of lilies and roses, the enchantingresult of the change of style in Pittrino - they assumedthe poses of sirens so Anacreontically - that the principalechevin, when admitted to view this capital piece in thesalle of Cropole, at once declared that these ladies weretoo handsome, of too animated a beauty, to figure as a signin the eyes of passers-by.

To Pittrino he added, "His royal highness, Monsieur, whooften comes into our city, will not be much pleased to seehis illustrious mother so slightly clothed, and he will sendyou to the oubliettes of the state; for, remember, the heartof that glorious prince is not always tender. You mustefface either the two sirens or the legend, without which Iforbid the exhibition of the sign. I say this for your sake,Master Cropole, as well as for yours, Signor Pittrino."

What answer could be made to this? It was necessary to thankthe echevin for his kindness, which Cropole did. ButPittrino remained downcast and said he felt assured of whatwas about to happen.

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

"We must efface the legend," said Pittrino, in a melancholytone. "I have some excellent ivory-black; it will be done ina moment, and we will replace the Medici by the nymphs orthe sirens, whichever you prefer."

"No," said Cropole, "the will of my father must be carriedout. My father considered - - "

"He considered the figures of the most importance," saidPittrino.

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

"The proof of the importance in which he held the figures,"said Pittrino, "is that he desired they should belikenesses, and they are so."

"Yes; but if they had not been so, who would have recognizedthem without the legend? At the present day even, when thememory of the Blaisois begins to be faint with regard tothese two celebrated persons, who would recognize Catherineand Mary without the words `To the Medici'?"

"But the figures?" said Pittrino, in despair; for he feltthat young Cropole was right. "I should not like to lose thefruit of my labor."

"And I should not wish you to be thrown into prison andmyself into the oubliettes."

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

"No," replied Cropole, firmly. "I have got an idea, asublime idea - your picture shall appear, and my legendlikewise. Does not `Medici' mean doctor, or physician, inItalian?"

"Yes, in the plural."

"Well, then, you shall order another sign-frame of thesmith; you shall paint six physicians, and write underneath`Aux Medici' which makes a very pretty play upon words."

"Six physicians! impossible! And the composition?" criedPittrino.

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

This reasoning was peremptory - Pittrino obeyed. Hecomposed the sign of six physicians, with the legend; theechevin applauded and authorized it.

The sign produced an extravagant success in the city, whichproves that poetry has always been in the wrong, beforecitizens, as Pittrino said.

Cropole, to make amends to his painter-in-ordinary, hung upthe nymphs of the preceding sign in his bedroom, which madeMadame Cropole blush every time she looked at it, when shewas undressing at night.

This is the way in which the pointed-gable house got a sign;and this is how the hostelry of the Medici, making afortune, was found to be enlarged by a quarter, as we havedescribed. And this is how there was at Blois a hostelry ofthat name, and had for painter-in-ordinary Master Pittrino.