"Then he began to think that if afew 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..."



from Balzac's introduction to The Thirteen ("The Girl With the Golden Eyes" is one of the stories)