Denis, which at that time had for its superior a man of judgment, the
Abbot Adam; and he then gave evidence of tendencies and received his
training under influences worthy of the position which awaited him. He
was handsome, tall, strong, and alert, determined and yet affable. He
had more taste for military exercises than for the amusements of
childhood and the pleasures of youth. He was at that time called Louis
the Wide-awake. He had the good fortune to find in the Monastery of St.
Denis a fellow-student capable of becoming a king's counsellor. Suger, a
child born at St. Denis, of obscure parentage, and three or four years
younger than Prince Louis, had been brought up for charity's sake in the
abbey, and the Abbot Adam, who had perceived his natural abilities, had
taken pains to develop them. A bond of esteem and mutual friendship was
formed between the two young people, both of whom were disposed to
earnest thought and earnest living; and when, in 1108, Louis the Wide-
awake ascended the throne, the monk Suger became his adviser whilst
remaining his friend.

A very small kingdom was at that time the domain belonging properly and
directly to the King of France. Ile-de-France, properly so called, and a
part of Orleanness (_l'Oreanais_), pretty nearly the five departments of
the Seine, Seine-et-Oise, Seineet-Marne, Oise and Loiret, besides,
through recent acquisitions, French Vexin (which bordered on the Ile-de-
France and had for its chief place Pontoise, being separated by the
little River Epte from Norman Vexin, of which Rouen was the capital),
half the countship of Sens and the countship of Bourges--such was the
whole of its extent. But this limited state was as liable to agitation,
and often as troublous and as toilsome to govern, as the very greatest of
modern states. It was full of Petty lords, almost sovereigns in their
own estates, and sufficiently strong to struggle against their kingly
suzerain, who had, besides, all around his domains, several neighbors