"All right," said Pitou, "I rather think we shall take to the kid, though he is a tiny creature."
"Look at that," said the women together, "he thinks it a little dear just like us."
"I should like you to come over to Master Niquet's where I will leave the money required so that you may be content and the child happy."
Gilbert took leave of the women and bent over the cradle in which the new-comer had ousted the rightful heir. He wore a sombre air.
"You look little like me," he muttered, "for you have the aspect of your proud mother, the aristocratic Andrea, daughter of Baron Taverney."
The trait broke his heart: he pressed his nails into his flesh to keep down the tears flowing from his aching breast. He left a kiss timid and tremulous on the babe's fresh cheek and tottered out. He gave half a louis to little Ange, who was stumbling between his legs, and shook hands with the women who thought it an honor. So many emotions oppressed the father of eighteen years that little more would have prostrated him. Pale and nervous, his brain was spinning.
"Let us be off," he said to Pitou, waiting on the sill.
"Master!" called out Madeline from the threshold: "his name—what did you say his name is?"
"Call him Gilbert," replied the young man with manly pride.
The business at the notary's was quickly done. Money was banked for the child's keep and bringing up as became a farmhand's offspring. For fifteen years education and training was to be given him, and the balance was to be devoted to fitting him in a trade or buying a plot of land. At his eighteenth year some two thousand livres were to be paid the nurse and her husband, who would have the other sum yearly from the intermediary.