Now, however, comes the dramatic part of the action, which was so happily invented by Guillen de Castro. Ximena, the daughter of Count Lozano, is represented in the drama as already attached to the young knight; and a contest, therefore, arises between her sense of what she owes to the memory of her father and what she may yield to her own affection; a contest that continues through the whole of the play, and constitutes its chief interest. She comes, indeed, at once to the king, full of a passionate grief, that struggles with success, for a moment, against the dictates of her heart, and claims the punishment of her lover according to the ancient laws of the realm. He escapes, however, in consequence of the prodigious victories he gains over the Moors, who, at the moment when these events occurred, were assaulting the city. Subsequently, by the contrivance of false news of the Cid’s death, a confession of her love is extorted from her; and at last her full consent to marry him is obtained, partly by Divine intimations, and partly by the natural progress of her admiration and attachment during a series of exploits achieved in her honor and in defence of her king and country. This drama of Guillen de Castro has become better known throughout Europe than any other of his works; not only because it is the best of them all, but because Corneille, who was his contemporary, made it the basis of his own brilliant tragedy of “The Cid”; a drama which did more than any other to determine for two centuries the character of the theatre all over the continent of Europe. But though Corneille--not unmindful of the angry discussions carried on about the unities, under the influence of Cardinal Richelieu--has made alterations in the action of his play, which are fortunate and judicious, still he has relied, for its main interest, on that contest between the duties and the affections of the heroine which was first imagined by Guillen de Castro.