It was free determination and complete submission to reason, duty, objective utility, to what was fitting--and not a spirit of courtly adulation--that led him to look with an equal ecstasy of admiration upon personages in high positions and upon monarchs, the summit of the pyramid. He did not therefore admit them because they can do everything, still less because they can enjoy everything, but on the contrary, because, owing to their office, their discipline and tradition, they are accustomed to sacrifice their private affections and to conduct themselves in obedience to motives superior to the individual. Kings too have a heart, they too are exposed to the soft snares of love; but better than all others they know what is becoming behaviour: "_Je suis reine et dois régner sur moi: Je rang que nous tenons, jaloux de notre gloire, Souvent dans un tel choix nous défend de nous croire, Jette sur nos désirs un joug impérieux, Et dédaigne l'avis et du cœur et des yeux._" And elsewhere: "_Les princes out cela de leur haute naissance, Leur âme dans leur rang prend des impressions Qui dessous leur vertu rangent leurs passions; Leur générosité soumet tout à leur gloire ..._." They love, certainly, as it happens to all to love, but they do not on that account yield to the attractions of the senses. "_Je ne le cèle point, j'aime, Carlos, oui, j'aime; Mais l'amour de l'état plus fort que de moi-même, Cherche, au lieu de l'objet le plus doux à mes yeux, Le plus digne héros de régner en ces lieux._" His predilection for history, especially for Roman history, has the same root, and had long been elaborated as an ideal--even in the Rome of the Empire, yet more so at the time of the Renaissance and during the post-Renaissance, and even in the schools of the Jesuits. It was thus transformed into a history that afforded examples of civic virtues, such as self-sacrifice, heroism, and greatness of resolve. We spare the reader the demonstration that this tendency was altogether different from, and indeed opposed to historical knowledge and to the so-called "historical sense," because questions of this sort and the accompanying eulogies accorded to Corneille as a historian, are now to be looked upon as antiquated.