La Grande Mademoiselle and most of her contemporaries escaped _Astrée's_ influence in this respect; they did not admit that man has "neither will nor understanding" where his passions are concerned; or that his feelings depend on "destiny." Corneille, who had confronted the question, set forth the principle that the heart should defer to the will. "The love of an honest man," he wrote in 1634,[33]--"The love of an honest man should always be voluntary. One ought never to love to the point where he cannot help loving, and if he carries love so far, he is the slave of a tyranny whose yoke he should shake off." In her youth Mademoiselle de Montpensier was one of the truest of the Cornéliennes of her generation; she practised what others were contented to restrict to preaching. Love's tyranny appeared to her a shameful thing, and she was so convinced that it rested with the lover whether he should be a slave or free himself "by shaking off the yoke," that even the most honest attacks of moral faintness were, in her eyes, occasions for judgment without mercy. One day--she tells it herself--she turned a young _femme de chambre_ out of her service simply "because the girl had married for love." The shame then attendant upon love increased in proportion to the "condition" of the slaves of the questionable passion. The lower orders were insignificant, and their loves and their antipathies, like their sufferings, were beneath the consideration of reason, but when men were of a certain rank, sentiment was debarred from the conditions of marriage. Mademoiselle followed all the precepts of high quality, and throughout the first half of her life her line of action lay parallel with the noble principles introduced by Corneille. Jansenism, which, like Corneille, raised the veil of life for many of the humbler human hearts, made no impression upon "tall Mademoiselle." Lauzun was needed to break her pride. Concerning moral questions, public sentiment was calm; the only serious difference raised by d'Urfé's work during a period of half a century was the conflict of opinions[34] on human liberty; on all other subjects, notably the things of taste, d'Urfé was in harmony with public feeling; at times _Astrée_ exceeded public feeling, but it seldom conflicted with it. The sentiments of the book were far in advance of the epoch. But the nature with which d'Urfé communed and which he loved was the nature viewed by Louis XIII., and fashioned according to the royal taste, improved, repaired, decorated with artificial ornaments, and confined within circumscribed landscapes composed of complicated horticultural figures; a composite nature in which verdure was nothing but a feature. The fashion of landscape-gardening--an invention of the Renaissance--had arrived in France from Italy. In the land of its birth very amusing specimens of the picturesque were maintained by intelligent property-owners.