PREFACE

Thirteen men were banded together in Paris under the Empire, all
imbued with one and the same sentiment, all gifted with sufficient
energy to be faithful to the same thought, with sufficient honor among
themselves never to betray one another even if their interests
clashed; and sufficiently wily and politic to conceal the sacred ties
that united them, sufficiently strong to maintain themselves above the
law, bold enough to undertake all things, and fortunate enough to
succeed, nearly always, in their undertakings; having run the greatest
dangers, but keeping silence if defeated; inaccessible to fear;
trembling neither before princes, nor executioners, not even before
innocence; accepting each other for such as they were, without social
prejudices,--criminals, no doubt, but certainly remarkable through
certain of the qualities that make great men, and recruiting their
number only among men of mark. That nothing might be lacking to the
sombre and mysterious poesy of their history, these Thirteen men have
remained to this day unknown; though all have realized the most
chimerical ideas that the fantastic power falsely attributed to the
Manfreds, the Fausts, and the Melmoths can suggest to the imagination.
To-day, they are broken up, or, at least, dispersed; they have
peaceably put their necks once more under the yoke of civil law, just
as Morgan, that Achilles among pirates, transformed himself from a
buccaneering scourge to a quiet colonist, and spent, without remorse,
around his domestic hearth the millions gathered in blood by the lurid
light of flames and slaughter.

Since the death of Napoleon, circumstances, about which the author
must keep silence, have still farther dissolved the original bond of