It is known [said Jules Lemaître] that despite the fact that the popular enthusiasm was prodigious the critics were implacable. Perhaps the criticisms were not all inspired by base envy of the author. I believe in the good faith of the Academy, and to my mind, it seems possible that the criticisms of the Academy were not considered either partial or unjust by every one in France; it may be that there were many thinkers who shared the opinions of Cardinal de Richelieu and the majority of the Academy. These lines are truth itself; the _Cid_ was an immoral play because it was the apotheosis of passionate love, whose rights it proclaimed at the expense of the most imperious duties. There was enough in the _Cid_ to shock any social body holding firmly fixed opinions adverse to the public exhibition of intimate personal feelings; there were such bodies--the Academy was one of them--they made their own conditions, and the license of the prevailing morals was insignificant to them. The national idea of the superior rights of the family was well-grounded, and when the Academy reproached Chimène because she was "too sensible of the feelings of the lover--too conscious of her love ... too unnatural a daughter"--it did no more than echo a large number of voices. Until he wrote the _Cid_ Corneille was more exigeant than the Academy. The only thing required of lovers by the Academy was that they, the lovers, should govern their feelings and love, or not love, according to the commands of their families or their notaries. The Academy asked nothing of them but to control their actions regardless of their hearts; surely that was indulgence; beyond that there remained but one thing more,--to suppress the mind. We do not consider it essential [said _Sentiments Sur le Cid_] to condemn Chimène because she loved her father's murderer; her engagement to Rodrigue had preceded the murder, and it is not within the power of a person to cease loving at will. We blame her because, while she was pursuing Rodrigue, ostensibly to his disadvantage, she was making vows and besieging Heaven in his favour; this was a too evident betrayal of her natural obligations in favour of her passion; it was too openly searching for a cloak to cover her wishes, and making less of the daughter than of the daughter's power to love her lover; in other words, it was cheapening the natural character of the daughter to the advantage of the lover.