ye had taken a leading,
superior part among us, the part of a gentleman who has a wife, towards
four others who have not got one, and he abused that privilege so far as
to kiss Fly in our presence, when he put her on his knee after meals,
and by other prerogatives, which were as humiliating as they were
irritating.

"They had been isolated in the sleeping-room by means of a curtain, but I
soon perceived that my companions and I had the same arguments in our
minds, in our solitude: 'Why, and in virtue of what law of exception, or
of what unacceptable principle, should Fly, who does not appear
troubled by any prejudices, remain faithful to her lover, while wives in
the best are not faithful to their husbands.'

"Our reflections were quite right, and we were soon convinced of it, and
we ought only to have made them sooner, so as not to have needed to
regret any lost time, for Fly deceived Only-One-Eye, with all the others
of the crew of the _Leaf Turned Upside Down_, and she deceived him
without making any difficulties, without any resistance, the first time
any of us asked her.

"Of course, modest people will be terribly shocked! But why? What
courtesan who happens to be in the fashion, but has a dozen lovers, and
which of those lovers is stupid enough not to know it? Is it not the
correct thing to have an evening at the house of a celebrated and marked
courtesan, just as one has an evening at the _Opera, the Theatre
Francais or the Odeon_? Ten men subscribe together to keep a mistress
just as they do to possess a race horse, which only one jockey mounts,
and this is a correct picture of the favored lover who does not pay
anything.

"From delicacy they left Fly to Only-One-Eye from Saturday night to
Monday morning, and we only deceived him during the week, in Paris, from
the Seine, which, for boatmen like us, was hardly deceiving him at all.
The situation had this peculiarity, that the four freebooters of Fly's
favors were quite aware of this partition of her among themselves, and
that they spoke of it to each other, and even then, with allusions that
made her laugh very much. Only-One-Eye alone seemed to know nothing, and
that peculiar position gave rise to some embarrassment between him and
us, and seemed to separate him from us, to isolate him, to raise a
barrier across our former confidence and our former intimacy. That gave
him a difficult and a rather ridiculous part to play towards us, the
part of a deceived l