safe in our supposed insignificance. Confreres, permit me to impress on
you the causes why, insignificant as we seem, we are really formidable.
In the first place, we are few: the great mistake in most secret
associations has been to admit many councillors; and disunion enters
whereever many tongues can wrangle. In the next place, though so few in
council, we are legion when the time comes for action; because we are
representative men, each of his own section, and each section is capable
of an indefinite expansion.

"You, valiant Pole, you, politic Italian, enjoy the confidence of
thousands now latent in unwatched homes and harmless callings, but who,
when you lift a finger, will, like the buried dragon's teeth, spring up
into armed men. You, Jan Vanderstegen, the trusted delegate from
Verviers, that swarming camp of wronged labour in its revolt from the
iniquities of capital,--you, when the hour arrives, can touch the wire
that flashes the telegram 'Arise' through all the lands in which workmen
combine against their oppressors.

"Of us five Frenchmen, let me speak more modestly. You, sage and
scholar, Felix Ruvigny, honoured alike for the profundity of your science
and the probity of your manners, induced to join us by your abhorrence of
priestcraft and superstition,--you made a wide connection among all the
enlightened reasoners who would emancipate the mind of man from the
trammels of Church-born fable, and when the hour arrives in which it is
safe to say, 'Delenda est Roma,' you know where to find the pens that are
more victorious than swords against a Church and a Creed. You" (turning
to the surgeon)--"you, Gaspard le Noy, whom a vile calumny has robbed of
the throne in your profession so justly due to your skill, you, nobly
scorning the rich and great, have devoted yourself to tend and heal the
humble and the penniless, so that you have won the popular title of the