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 more powerful than himself in the extent and population of their states.
But lord and peasant, layman and ecclesiastic, castle and country and the churches of France, were not long discovering that, if the kingdom was small, it had verily a king.

Louis did not direct to a distance from home his ambition and his efforts; it was within his own dominion, to check the violence of the strong against the weak, to put a stop to the quarrels of the strong amongst themselves, to make an end, in France at least, of unrighteousness and devastation, and to establish there some sort of order and some sort of justice, that he displayed his energy and his perseverance.