"If, as you say, God gave me full possession of power over myself, why does He ask me to give an account of myself?--for just as He gave me into my own hands and just as He gave me to myself, so have I given myself to her to whom I am consigned for ever. First of all! If He would have account of Celadon, let Him apply to her of whom I am! Enough for me if I offend not her nor violate my sacred gift to her. God willed my life, for by my destiny I love; and God knows it, and has always known it, for since I first began to have a will I gave myself to her, and still am hers. In brief, I should not have been blest by love as I have been in all these years had God not willed it.[32] If He has willed it would it be just to punish me because I still remain as He ordained that I should be? No! for I have not power to change my fate. So be it, if my parents and my friends condemn me! They all should be content and glad, when for my acts, I give my reason; _that I love her_."
"But," answered Adamas, "do you count on living long in such away?"
"Election," answered Celadon, "depends not on him who has neither will nor understanding."
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.