They took the bait, winked at one another, and began to look at
me in a more friendly way--the landlord foremost. But when I had
led them so far, I dared go no farther, lest I should commit
myself and be found out. I stopped, therefore, and, harking back
to general subjects, chanced to compare my province with theirs.
The landlord, now become almost talkative, was not slow to take
up this challenge; and it presently led to my acquiring a curious
piece of knowledge. He was boasting of his great snow mountains,
the forests that propped them, the bears that roamed in them, the
izards that loved the ice, and the boars that fed on the oak
mast.
'Well,' I said, quite by chance, 'we have not these things, it is
true. But we have things in the north you have not. We have
tens of thousands of good horses--not such ponies as you breed
here. At the horse fair at Fecamp my sorrel would be lost in the
crowd. Here in the south you will not meet his match in a long
day's journey.'
'Do not make too sure of that,' the man replied, his eyes bright
with triumph and the dram. 'What would you say if I showed you a
better--in my own stable?'
I saw that his words sent a kind of thrill through his other
hearers, and that such of them as understood for two or three of
them talked their PATOIS only--looked at him angrily; and in a
twinkling I began to comprehend.
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