"But the figures?" said Pittrino, in despair; for he felt that young Cropole 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 the oubliettes."
"Let us efface 'Medici'," said Pittrino, supplicatingly.
"No," replied Cropole, firmly. "I have got an idea, a sublime idea--your picture shall appear, and my legend likewise. Does not 'Medici' mean doctor, 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.