ctor, or physician, in Italian?"

"Yes, in the plural."

"Well, then, you shall order another sign-frame of the smith; you shall
paint six physicians, and write underneath '_Aux Medici_' which makes a
very 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 be
so--my macaroni is burning."

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

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

Cropole, to make amends to his painter-in-ordinary, hung up the nymphs
of the preceding sign in his bedroom, which made Madame Cropole blush
every 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 this
is how the hostelry of the Medici, making a fortune, was found to be
enlarged by a quarter, as we have described. And this is how there was
at Blois a hostelry of that name, and had for a painter-in-ordinary
Master Pittrino.

Chapter VI. The Unknown.

Thus founded and recommended by its sign, the hostelry of Master Cropole
held its way steadily on towards a solid prosperity.

It was not an immense fortune that Cropole had in perspective; but he
might hope to double the thousand louis d'or left by his father, to make
another thousand louis by the sale of his house and stock, and at length
to live happily like a retired citizen.

Cropole was anxious for gain, and was half-crazy with joy at the news of
the arrival of Louis XIV.

Himself, his wife, Pittrino, and two cooks, immediately laid hands
upon all the inhabitants of the dove-cote, the poultry-yard, and the
rabbit-hutches; so that as many lamentations and cries resounded in the
yards of the hostelry of the Medici as were formerly heard in Rama.

Cropole had, at the time, but one single traveler in his house.

This was a man of scarcely thirty years of age, handsome, tall, austere,
or rather melancholy, in all his gestures and looks.

He was dressed in black velvet with jet trimmings; a white collar, as
plain as that of the severest Puritan, set off the whiteness of his
youthful neck; a small dark-colored mustache scarcely covered his
curled, disdainful lip.

He spoke to people looking them