ow at
the end of October; Prince Djalma might then be in France by the
commencement of the month of January; and according to your instructions,
of which I know not the motive, but which I execute with zeal and
submission, his departure must be prevented at all hazards, because, you
tell me, some of the gravest interests of the Society would be
compromised, by the arrival of this young Indian in Paris before the 13th
of February. Now, if I succeed, as I hope, in making him miss this
opportunity of the 'Ruyter' it will be materially impossible for him to
arrive in France before the month of April; for the 'Ruyter' is the only
vessel which makes the direct passage, the others taking at least four or
five months to reach Europe.

"Before telling you the means which I have thought right to employ, to
detain Prince Djalma--of the success of which means I am yet
uncertain--it is well that you should be acquainted with the following
facts.

"They have just discovered, in British India, a community whose members
call themselves 'Brothers of the Good Work,' or 'Phansegars,' which
signifies simply 'Thugs' or 'Stranglers;' these murderers do not shed
blood, but strangle their victims, less for the purpose of robbing them,
than in obedience to a homicidal vocation, and to the laws of an infernal
divinity named by them 'Bowanee.'

"I cannot better give you an idea of this horrible sect, than by
transcribing here some lines from the introduction of a report by Colonel
Sleeman, who has hunted out this dark association with indefatigable
zeal. The report in question was published about two months ago. Here is
the extract; it is the colonel who speaks:

"'From 1822 to 1824, when I was charged with the magistracy and civil
administration of the district of Nersingpore, not a murder, not the
least robbery was committed by an ordinary criminal, without my being
immediately informed of it; but if any one had come and told me at this
period, that a band of hereditary assassins by profession lived in the
village of Kundelie, within about four hundred yards of my court of
justice--that the beautiful groves of the village of Mundesoor, within a
day's march of my residence, formed one of the most frightful marts of
assassination in all India--that numerous bands of 'Brothers of the Good
Work,' coming from Hindostan and the Deccan, met annually beneath these
shades, as at a solemn festival, to exercise their dreadful vocation upon
all the ro