of the laws of the
world; submitting only to the sense of necessity, obedient only from
devotion; acting all as one man in the interests of the comrade who
should claim the aid of the rest; a band of buccaneers with carriages
and yellow kid gloves; a close confederacy of men of extraordinary
power, of amused and cool spectators of an artificial and petty world
which they cursed with smiling lips; conscious as they were that they
could make all things bend to their caprice, weave ingenious schemes of
revenge, and live with the life in thirteen hearts, to say nothing
of the unfailing pleasure of facing the world of men with a hidden
misanthropy, a sense that they were armed against their kind, and could
retire into themselves with one idea which the most remarkable men had
not,--all this constituted a religion of pleasure and egoism which
made fanatics of the Thirteen. The history of the Society of Jesus was
repeated for the Devil's benefit. It was hideous and sublime.

The pact was made; and it lasted, precisely because it seemed
impossible. And so it came to pass that in Paris there was a fraternity
of thirteen men, each one bound, body and soul, to the rest, and all
of them strangers to each other in the sight of the world. But evening
found them gathered together like conspirators, and then they had no
thoughts apart; riches, like the wealth of the Old Man of the Mountain,
they possessed in common; they had their feet in every salon, their
hands in every strong box, their elbows in the streets, their heads upon
all pillows, they did not scruple to help themselves at their pleasure.
No chief commanded them, nobody was strong enough. The liveliest
passion, the most urgent need took precedence--that was all. They were
thirteen unknown kings; unknown, but with all the power and more than
the power of kings; for they were both judges and executioners, they had
taken wings that they might traverse the heights and depths of society,
scorning to take any place in it, since all was theirs. If the author
learns the reason of their abdication, he will communicate it.

And now the author is free to give those episodes in the History of the
Thirteen which, by reason of the Parisian flavor of the details or the
strangeness of the contrasts, possessed a peculiar attraction for him.

Paris

THE THIRTEEN

I. FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS

CHAPTER I. MADAME JULES

Certain streets in Paris are as degraded as