"A great deal, Your Highness, since we have no pans of our own."
"Did you ever have any?"
"Any number, Your Highness, any number; but Widenostrils has just eaten our last one."
"Has just eaten your last one, you say? Pray who is this Widenostrils who has a fancy for gobbling frying-pans?"
"A wicked giant, almost as tall as Your Highness, who has swallowed all our windmills."
"But windmills are not frying-pans, friend?"
"No, Your Highness is quite right there; but I was just about to say that, when there were no more windmills to swallow, this wicked giant took to shovelling every skillet, kettle, frying-pan, dripping-pan, and brass and iron pot in the land down his big throat, and all for want of windmills, which were his daily food. That made him very sick. It almost killed him. We hoped it had killed him outright; but it didn't. But he is dying, now, sure enough."
"Dying of what?" asked Pantagruel; "of eating frying-pans and skillets?"
"I wish it was! Some people do say so; but others, who are fishermen, and who live on the coast, and know everything that happens, declare that our giant went, a month ago, to another island, where he has been going for years, to swallow windmills, and vex the poor people there, and that he took in, with his last batch of windmills, I don't know how many cocks and hens. Now that I remember, I did hear that his own doctor made the choking worse by making him eat a big lump of fresh butter too near a hot oven. All this is very strange, though—I can't quite make it out myself."
"Where is that great Widenostrils? I should like to see him."