"Why won't you kiss Mamma Catherine, Papa Pitou?"
"Good gracious!" gasped Pitou, turning pale as if about to die, but letting his cold and trembling lip touch her cheek.
Taking the boy up, she put him in Pitou's arms, and said:
"I give you the boy, Ange; will you have the mother?"
This time, it was too much for the swain, whose head swam; he shut his eyes, and while he hugged the child, he dropped on a chair, and panted with the delicacy which only a delicate heart could appreciate:
"Oh, Master Isidore, how very fond I am of you!"
Isidore called Pitou "Papa Pitou," but Pitou called him "Master Isidore."
That is why, as he felt that love for her son had made Catherine love Ange, he did not say:
"Oh, how dearly I love you, Catherine!"