none 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