In the Paris of the Empire there were found Thirteen men equally
impressed with the same idea, equally endowed with energy enough to
keep them true to it, while among themselves they were loyal enough to
keep faith even when their interests seemed to clash. They were strong
enough to set themselves above all laws; bold enough to shrink from no
enterprise; and lucky enough to succeed in nearly everything that they
undertook. So profoundly politic were they, that they could dissemble
the tie which bound them together. They ran the greatest risks, and
kept their failures to themselves. Fear never entered into their
calculations; not one of them had trembled before princes, before the
executioner's axe, before innocence. They had taken each other as they
were, regardless of social prejudices. Criminals they doubtless were,
yet none the less were they all remarkable for some one of the virtues
which go to the making of great men, and their numbers were filled up
only from among picked recruits. Finally, that nothing should be
lacking to complete the dark, mysterious romance of their history,
nobody to this day knows who they were. The Thirteen once realized all
the wildest ideas conjured up by tales of the occult powers of a
Manfred, a Faust, or a Melmoth; and to-day the band is broken up or,
at any rate, dispersed. Its members have quietly returned beneath the
yoke of the Civil Code; much as Morgan, the Achilles of piracy, gave
up buccaneering to be a peaceable planter; and, untroubled by qualms
of conscience, sat himself down by the fireside to dispose of
blood-stained booty acquired by the red light of blazing towns.

After Napoleon's death, the band was dissolved by a chance event which
the author is bound for the present to pass over in silence, and its
mysterious existence, as curious, it may be, as the darkest novel by
Mrs. Radcliffe, came to an end.