In the middle of the sixteenth century, France was not the centralized, orderly, well-policed country which the traveler of the nineteenth century is so eager to visit, and which he leaves with so much regret. It was in name a monarchy; but unless the king were a man of resolute will, he became a mere pageant in the state. The nobility inherited much of the haughty turbulent spirit of their Frank ancestors, and despite--if not in consequence of--what Louis XI. had done, they still looked upon the sovereign as little more than the first among peers, _primus inter pares_, paying him the respect due to his position as their nominal superior; but resisting him when they pleased, and only kept in order by the power of rival barons. When Montluc summoned the mutinous nobles of the South to return to their allegiance, and obey the king, they exclaimed: “What king? We are the king. The one you speak of is a baby king: we will give him the rod, and show him how to earn his living like other people.” It was very much in this spirit that the house of Guise behaved toward Francis II. and his two successors. France was divided into numerous provinces,[159] partially independent under their own governors and parliaments, and with hardly more sympathy between them than there is now between Belgium and Holland. In almost every province you heard a separate dialect: the Normans and the Gascons were mutually unintelligible, and the inhabitant of Brittany had as little in common with the dweller in Languedoc as the Sussex boor with his fellow-laborer in Picardy. The river Loire divided the kingdom into two parts--morally as well as geographically. Even to this day the traveler observes a difference between the people, their speech, their customs, and their dress, immediately he crosses that boundary line. Great part of the country north of the Loire had for centuries been governed by traditionary rules similar to our common law; to the south, the code of Justinian had never fallen into complete desuetude; and the forms--shadowy enough sometimes--of the Roman municipalities still existed. The former had a strong resemblance to England as it was at the close of the Wars of the Roses; the latter reminded the Italian traveler of his native land. On both sides of the river there was the same impatience of that central authority which the modern Frenchman worships. The provincial parliaments registered or rejected the king’s decrees at their pleasure, and the taxes were levied by order of their own estates; self-government in form more than in reality. The governor of many a petty castle would set at naught the king’s express orders.