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.