miscall the
brands of the felon, still owe it to your special fraternity to
keep your movements rigidly concealed. The tyrant would suppress the
International Society, and forbids it the liberty of congress. To
you three is granted the secret entrance to our council-hall. But we
Frenchmen are as yet 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 wherever 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 'Medecin des Pauvres,' when the time comes wherein soldiers
shall fly before the sansculottes, and the mob shall begin the work
which they who move mobs will complete, the clients of Gaspard le Noy
will be the avengers of his wrongs.

"You, Armand Monnier,