War and Peace vocabulary

Indeed, I have known a Gascon, whose limbs were eloquent as his tongue: he never mentioned the word sleep without reclining his head upon his hand; when he had occasion to talk of a horse, he always started up and trotted across the room, except when he was so situated that he could not stir without incommoding the company, and in that case he contented himself with neighing aloud.

Tobias Smollett. The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle

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In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed, so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals, and so dazzled by the sight of Murat’s mantle and ostrich plumes, that their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that he ought to be firing at the enemy!”

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: 02 (Book Two)

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He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of the Cauchois.

Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary

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I remember, on a time, that in the camp at Stockholm there was a certain Gascon named Gratianauld, native of the town of Saint Sever, who having lost all his money at play, and consecutively being very angry thereat

Rabelais. Gargantua and Pantagruel