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.