ABSTRACT
Perhaps the most striking differences are still those that exist between northern and southern France. Pointing to southern France, many French commentators acknowledge that there "always has been and always will be "another" France' in the south, and even within this region there exist 'all manner of various originalities'. 1 The fundamental difference between the north and south of France has paradoxically become ever more pronounced as a sense of national consciousness has emerged in the latter centuries. In the nineteenth century, those accustomed to the sophisticated salons of Parisian society looked aghast at those that appeared to taint their image of what it meant to be French. To the governing elite of Paris the south of France - the French Midi - must have seemed a distant and uncontrollable region. The political difficulties that they faced in mastering the Midi accentuated misunderstandings between the two regions. Those from the French Midi were caricatured as unruly, ungovernable, irrational; in short, a people more akin to their Italian neighbours than their French counterparts.2 The Parisian elite that toured the French provinces seeking to reflect upon the romantic delights of the nation often discovered - particularly when they entered the sun-soaked landscape of the Midi - that their expectations were rarely fulfilled. Many were left 'panic-stricken' as they realized 'how socially and anthropologically
2 HUGUENOT HEARTLAND
alien were the human faces in the hinterlands of the country, how internally contradictory was the population of France'.3
