Henry de Montmorency, by every title the flower of the French nobility, was now thirty-seven years old. He was descended in the direct line, through nineteen generations, from an ancestor who was baptized with Clovis. Ever since then the heads of the family had borne the proud legend of “Premier Chrestien que Roy en France; premier Seigneur de Montmorency que Roy en France; premier Baron de France.” Their war-cry was “Dieu ayde au premier Chrestien”; their motto, “Sans tache.” Montmorency’s father, his grandfather, and several of his ancestors had borne the title of Constable of France, and he was himself High Admiral, till Richelieu purchased the charge and assumed the duties under another name. He had succeeded to the government of Languedoc at his father’s death in 1614, before he was twenty. A popular governor of a very difficult province constantly torn by civil war, he spent the greater part of his time in the south. When not engaged in keeping down his turbulent Protestants or in managing his provincial Estates, always discontented, he was to be found in the front rank of Louis XIII.’s campaigns. He did not care greatly for life at Court, though, as a boy, he had been a special favourite with Henry IV., who gave him his name, and though, by the marriages of his half-sister and sister--one with the Duc d’Angoulême, the other with the Prince de Condé--he was nearly connected with the royal family. But he lived magnificently, when in Paris, at the Hôtel de Montmorency, and in the country at his châteaux of Écouen or Chantilly. He was the admiration of society--handsome, a bold rider, a fine dancer, and a very great flirt, in spite of the constant love between him and his young Roman wife, the best and most devoted of women, Maria Felice Orsini. Their story is among the most touching romances of the century. In many ways the Duc de Montmorency stood above the ordinary ranks of the noblesse, and a little apart from them. As proud and sensitive as any, a certain high touch of generous chivalry kept him free of their vindictive prejudices--as Cardinal de Richelieu had proved in the day when Louis XIII. lay ill at Lyons. His loyalty to the King had always been unimpeachable. But as early as 1629 the storm which was to sweep Montmorency into rebellion and ruin had begun to growl in the south. The governor of Languedoc felt a dangerous sympathy with his province, one of the old independent _pays d’États_, which saw itself deprived of power and autonomy in the matter of taxation by a centralizing edict. In the view of the provincial Estates, their “most sacred rights” were thus invaded and torn away. And there were not wanting enemies of Richelieu to fan the flame.