the name of Ferragus and to that of the Devorants completely dissipated.

As for the _Thirteen_, they were all men of the stamp of Trelawney, Lord
Byron's friend, who was, they say, the original of his "Corsair." They
were all fatalists, men of nerve and poesy, weary of leading flat and
empty lives, driven toward Asiatic enjoyments by forces all the more
excessive because, long dormant, they awoke furious. One of them, after
re-reading "Venice Preserved," and admiring the sublime union of Pierre
and Jaffier, began to reflect on the virtues shown by men who are
outlawed by society, on the honesty of galley-slaves, the faithfulness
of thieves among each other, the privileges of exorbitant power which
such men know how to win by concentrating all ideas into a single will.
He saw that Man is greater than men. He concluded that society ought
to belong wholly to those distinguished beings who, to natural
intelligence, acquired wisdom, and fortune, add a fanaticism hot enough
to fuse into one casting these different forces. That done, their occult
power, vast in action and in intensity, against which the social order
would be helpless, would cast down all obstacles, blast all other wills,
and give to each the devilish power of all. This world apart within the
world, hostile to the world, admitting none of the world's ideas,
not recognizing any law, not submitting to any conscience but that of
necessity, obedient to a devotion only, acting with every faculty for
a single associate when one of their number asked for the assistance of
all,--this life of filibusters in lemon kid gloves and cabriolets;
this intimate union of superior beings, cold and sarcastic, smiling and
cursing in the midst of a false and puerile society; this certainty of
forcing all things to serve an end, of plotting a vengeance that could
not fail of living in thirteen hearts; this happiness of nurturing a
secret hatred in the face of men, and of being always in arms against
this; this ability to withdraw to the sanctuary of self with one idea
more than even the most remarkable of men could have,--this religion of
pleasure and egotism cast so strong a spell over Thirteen men that they
revived the society of Jesuits to the profit of the devil.

It was horrible and stupendous; but the compact was made, and it lasted
precisely because it appeared to be so impossible.

There was, therefore, in Paris a brotherhood of _Thirteen_, who belonged
to each other abso