The attentive man who reads great works feels at times, in the middle of reading, certain sudden fits of cold followed by a kind of excess of heat ("I no longer understand!--I understand!"), shivering and burning,--something which causes him to be a little upset, at the same time that he is very much struck. Only minds of the first order, only men of supreme genius, subject to heedless wanderings in the infinite, give to the reader this singular sensation,--stupor for most, ecstasy for a few. These few are the _élite._ As we have already observed, this _élite_, gathered from century to century, and always adding to itself, at last makes up a number, becomes in time a multitude, and composes the supreme crowd,--the definitive public of men of genius, sovereign like them. It is with that public that at the end one must deal. Nevertheless, there is another public, other appraisers, other judges, to whom we have lately alluded. They are not content. The men of genius, the great minds,--this Æschylus, this Isaiah, this Juvenal, this Dante, this Shakespeare,--are beings, imperious, tumultuous, violent, passionate, extreme riders of winged steeds, "overleaping all boundaries," having their own goal, which "goes beyond the goal," "exaggerated," taking scandalous strides, flying abruptly from one idea to another, and from the north pole to the south pole, crossing the heavens in three steps, making little allowance for short breaths, tossed about by all the winds, and at the same time full of some unaccountable equestrian confidence amidst their bounds across the abyss, untractable to the "aristarchs," refractory to state rhetoric, not amiable to asthmatical _literati_, unsubdued to academic hygiene, preferring the foam of Pegasus to asses' milk. The worthy pedants are kind enough to be afraid for them. The ascent gives rise to the calculation of the fall. The compassionate cripples lament for Shakespeare. He is mad; he mounts too high! The crowd of college fags (they are a crowd) look on in wonder, and get angry. Æschylus and Dante make their connoisseurs blink their eyes every moment. This Æschylus is lost! This Dante is near falling! A god is soaring above; the worthy bourgeois cry out to him: "Look out for yourself!" CHAPTER V. Besides, these men of genius disconcert. One knows not on what to rely with them. Their lyric fever obeys them; they interrupt it when they like. They seem wild. All at once they stop. Their frenzy becomes melancholy. They are seen among the precipices, alighting ou a peak and folding their wings, and then they give way to meditation. Their meditation is not less surprising than their transport. Just now they were soaring above, now they sink below. But it is always the same boldness. They are pensive giants. Their Titanic revery needs the absolute and the unfathomable in which to expand. They meditate, as the sun shines, with the abyss around them.