“We were all very fond of her, for a thousand reasons first of all, but for only one, afterwards.  In the stern of our boat, she was a kind of small word mill, chattering to the wind which blew on the water.  She chattered ceaselessly, with that slight, continuous noise of those pieces of winged mechanism which turn in the breeze, and she thoughtlessly said the most unexpected, the funniest, the most astonishing things.  In that mind, all the parts of which seemed dissimilar, like rags of all kinds and of every color, not sewn, but merely tacked together, there appeared to be as much imagination as in a fairy tale, a good deal of coarseness, indecency, impudence and of the unexpected, and as much breeziness and landscapes as in a balloon voyage.

“We put questions to her, in order to call forth answers which she had found, no one could tell where, and the one with which we teased her most frequently was:  ‘Why are you called Fly?’ And she gave us such unlikely reasons that we left off rowing, in order to laugh.  But she pleased us also as a woman; and La Toque, who never rowed, and who sat by her side at the tiller the whole day long, once replied to the usual question:  ‘Why are you called Fly?’ ’Because she is a little Spanish fly.’

“Yes, a little buzzing, exciting fly, not the classical, poisonous, brilliant and mantled Spanish fly, but a little Spanish fly with red wings, which began to disturb the whole crew of The Leaf Turned Upside Down.  And what stupid jokes were also made about this leaf where this fly had alighted!

“Since the arrival of Fly on our boat, Only-One-Eye 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.