Our conversation took place in a sort of no-man's land of irregular French. M. Crèspy's patois and Midi twang battled for meaning against my stonewall classroom phrases.

Chou Shan Island had been fairly taken; to exchange it for a worthless rock nobody wanted was the height of idiocy! If not Chou Shan, then they wanted some other well-situated island in the mouth of the Yangtze.]

A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled.

In the home environment, nonchallenging activities such as watching television or taking short walks may be a good way to start.