faith. Moreover, the whole body professes doctrines that are
sufficiently true and sufficiently mysterious to electrify into a sort
of tribal loyalty all adepts whenever they obtain even a slight
development. The attachment of the Companions to their laws is so
passionate that the diverse tribes will fight sanguinary battles with
each other in defence of some question of principle.

Happily for our present public safety, when a Devorant is ambitious,
he builds houses, lays by his money, and leaves the Order. There is
many a curious thing to tell about the "Compagnons du Devoir"
[Companions of the Duty], the rivals of the Devorants, and about the
different sects of working-men, their usages, their fraternity, and
the bond existing between them and the free-masons. But such details
would be out of place here. The author must, however, add that under
the old monarchy it was not an unknown thing to find a
"Trempe-la-Soupe" enslaved to the king sentenced for a hundred and one
years to the galleys, but ruling his tribe from there, religiously
consulted by it, and when he escaped from his galley, certain of help,
succor, and respect, wherever he might be. To see its grand master at
the galleys is, to the faithful tribe, only one of those misfortunes
for which providence is responsible, and which does not release the
Devorants from obeying a power created by them to be above them. It
is but the passing exile of their legitimate king, always a king for
them. Thus we see the romantic prestige attaching to 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