This double favor, of a strangulation and a macaroni,
conferred upon the triangular house, gave poor Cropoli a
fancy to grace his hostelry with a pompous title. But his
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
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