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.
It was only lately that the present writer, detecting, as he fancied,
a faint desire for celebrity in one of the anonymous heroes to whom
the whole band once owed an occult allegiance, received the somewhat
singular permission to make public certain of the adventures which
befell that band, provided that, while telling the story in his own
fashion, he observed certain limits.
The aforesaid leader was still an apparently young man with fair hair
and blue eyes, and a soft, thin voice which might seem to indicate a
feminine temperament. His face was pale, his ways mysterious. He
chatted pleasantly, and told me that he was only just turned of forty.
He might have belonged to any one of the upper classes. The name which
he gave was probably assumed, and no one answering to his description
was known in society.
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