The manly characters in Corneille's heroic comedies never lower themselves to the plane of the common people, nor to a plane where they can think as the people think. Corneille was "of the Court" by all his feelings and by all his prejudices, and he shared Mademoiselle's belief that there is a natural difference between the man of quality and the man below the quality, because generous virtues are mingled with the blood which runs in noble veins, while the blood of the man of lower birth is mingled with lower passions. Being a true courtier, Corneille believed that above the two varieties of the human kind—the quality and the lesser people—Providence set the order of Princes who are of an essence apart, elect, and quasi-divine.
In Don Sancho d'Aragon Carlos did his best to prove that he was the son of a fisherman. His natural splendour gave the lie to his pretence. "Impossible that he could have sprung from blood formed by Heaven of nothing but clay."
Don Lope affirms that it cannot be true.
Non, le fils d'un pêcheur ne parle point ainsi ...
Je le soutien, Carlos, vous n'êtes point son fils,
La justice du ciel ne peut l'avoir permis,
Les tendresses du sang vous font une imposture,
Et je démens pour vous la voix de la nature.
He discovers that Carlos is the son of a King of Aragon. His extraordinary merit is explained and consistency is satisfied. On the whole Corneille did nothing but develop the maxims and idealise the models offered to his observation on all sides; as much may be said of the plots of his great plays. His subjects were suggested by the events of the day. Had there been no Mme. de Chevreuse and no conspiracies against Richelieu there could have been no Cinna. And it is possible that there might not have been such a work as Polyeucte had there been no Jansenism.[72]
Corneille did not understand actuality as we understand it. His tragedy is never a report of real occurrences, that is evident. But he was besieged, encompassed, possessed, by the life around him, and it left impressions in his mind which worked out and mingled with every subject upon which he entered. He was guided by his impressions,—though he did not know it,—and by their influence he was enabled to find a powerful tragedy in a few indifferent lines dropped by a mediocre historian, or by an inferior narrator of insignificant events. His surroundings furnished him with precise representations, made real to his mind by the vague abstractions of history. In the forms and conditions of the present he saw and felt all the past.[73]