"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 _Opéra, the Théâtre
Français 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 lover, almost a husband's part.

"As he was very clever and gifted with the special faculty of not showing
what he felt, we sometimes asked each other whether he did not guess
anything, and he took care to let us know, in a manner that was painful
for us. We were going to breakfast at Bougival, and we were rowing
vigorously, when La Toque, who had, that morning, the triumphant look of
a man who was satisfied, and who, sitting by the steers-woman, seemed to