"That was decided upon unanimously; they raised their hands to the dish
of fried fish and swore: 'We will adopt it.' Then, when she was thus
suddenly saved, and delivered from the weight of the terrible anxiety
that had been tormenting her for a month, this pretty, crazy, poor child
of love, Fly, exclaimed: 'Oh! my friends! my friends! You have kind,
good hearts ... good hearts.... Thank you, all of you!' And she shed
tears for the first time before us all.

"From that time we spoke in the boat about the child, as if it were
already born, and each of us took an exaggerated interest, because of
our share in the matter, in the slow and regular development of our
mistress's waist, and we stopped rowing in order to say: 'Fly?' 'Here I
am,' she replied. 'Boy or girl?' 'Boy.' 'What will he be when he grows
up?'

"Then she indulged in the most fantastic flights of fancy. They were
interminable stories, astounding inventions, from the day of his birth
until his final triumph. In the unsophisticated, passionate and moving
fancy of this extraordinary little creature, who now lived chastely in
the midst of us five, whom she called 'her five papas.' She saw him as a
sailor, and told us that he would discover another America; as a
general, restoring Alsace and Lorraine to France, then as an emperor,
founding a dynasty of wise and generous rulers who would bestow settled
welfare on our country; then as a learned man and natural philosopher,
revealing, first of all, the secret of the manufacture of gold, then
that of living forever; then as an aeronaut, who invented the means of
soaring up to the stars, and of making the skies an immense promenade
for men; the realization of the most unforeseen and magnificent dreams.

"How nice and how amusing she was, poor little girl, until the end of the