been, it is true, epochs when people thought otherwise. In those times the things which were trodden on would sometimes resent it, and would rebel,--but that was the ancient system, ridiculous now; and those who regret and grumble must be left to talk and to affirm that there was a better notion of right, justice, and honour in the stones of olden times than in the men of to-day. The rhetoricians, official and officious,--we have pointed out already their wonderful sagacity,--take strong precautions against men of genius. Men of genius are not great followers of the university; what is more, they are wanting in insipidity. They are lyrists, colourists, enthusiasts, enchanters, possessed, exalted, "rabid" (we have read the word) beings who, when everybody is small, have a mania for creating great things; in fact, they have every vice. A doctor has recently discovered that genius is a variety of madness. They are Michael Angelo handling giants; Rembrandt painting with a palette all bedaubed with the sun's rays; they are Dante, Rabelais, Shakespeare, exaggerated. They bring a wild art, roaring, flaming, dishevelled like the lion and the comet. Oh, shocking! There is coalition against them, and it is right. We have, luckily, the "teetotallers" of eloquence and poetry. "I like paleness," said one day a literary _bourgeois._ The literary _bourgeois_ exists. Rhetoricians, anxious on account of the contagions and fevers which are spread by genius, recommend with a lofty reason, which we have commended, temperance, moderation, "common-sense," the art of keeping within bounds, writers expurgated, trimmed, pruned, regulated, the worship of the qualities that the malignant call negative, continence, abstinence, Joseph, Scipio, the water-drinkers. It is all excellent,--only, young students must be warned that by following these sage precepts too closely they run the risk of glorifying the chastity of the eunuch. Maybe, I admire Bayard; I admire Origen less. CHAPTER VI. Résumé: Great minds are importunate; to deny them a little is judicious.