as La
Contemporaine.[*]
[*] A long series of so-called Memoirs, which appeared about 1830.
The Thirteen were all of them men tempered like Byron's friend
Trelawney, the original (so it is said) of /The Corsair/. All of them were
fatalists, men of spirit and poetic temperament; all of them were tired
of the commonplace life which they led; all felt attracted towards
Asiatic pleasures by all the vehement strength of newly awakened and
long dormant forces. One of these, chancing to take up /Venice
Preserved/ for the second time, admired the sublime friendship between
Pierre and Jaffir, and fell to musing on the virtues of outlaws, the
loyalty of the hulks, the honor of thieves, and the immense power that a
few men can wield if they bring their whole minds to bear upon the
carrying out of a single will. It struck him that the individual man rose
higher than men. Then he began to think that if a few picked men
should band themselves together; and if, to natural wit, and education,
and money, they could join a fanaticism hot enough to fuse, as it were,
all those separate forces into a single one, then the whole world would
be at their feet. From that time forth, with a tremendous power of
concentration, they could wield an occult power against which the
organization of society would be helpless; a power which would push
obstacles aside and defeat the will of others; and the diabolical power
of all would be at the service of each. A hostile world apart within the
world, admitting none of the ideas, recognizing 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 traverse the heights and depths of
society, scorning to take any place in it, since all was theirs. If the
author learns the reason of their abdication, he will communicate it.
And now the author is free to give those episodes in the History of the
Thirteen which, by reason of the Parisian flavor of the details or the
strangeness of the contrasts, possessed a peculiar attraction for him.
Paris
THE THIRTEEN
I.
FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS
By HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To Hector Berlioz.
CHAPTER I
MADAME JULES
Certain streets in Paris are as degraded as a man covered with infamy;
also, there are noble streets, streets simply respectable, young streets on
the morality of which the public has not yet formed an opinion; also
cut-throat streets, streets older than the age of the oldest dowagers,
estimable streets, streets always clean, streets always dirty, working,
laboring, and mercantile streets. In short, the streets of Paris have every
human quality, and impress us, by what we must call their
physiognomy, with certain ideas against which we are defenceless.
There are, for instance, streets of
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