"What is the matter with you, friend?" mischievously interrupted Madok the Brotaer. "Why should not your heart be glad--the heart of one who causes others to laugh so much--to laugh at your long neck and your long legs, and your long arms! Paskou the Long, my friend, what is the grief that you nurse at your heart?" "Tut! Tut! Tut! my friend Madok," the Baz-valan replied, "very long are my legs; still, they do not prevent the King's men from catching me, from grabbing me by the neck and saying: 'Pay! pay! pay!--pay over again! pay all the time!' Very long are my arms, but the arms of the bailiff of our seigneur, and of the tithes-collector of the curate are longer still! They are so long that they can reach down to the very bottom of my pockets, even if they were as bottomless as the wells of Melusine! Quite long is my neck--and yet, Monseigneur the Governor of Brittany could stretch it out still longer--aye, my poor long neck! That is the reason, my friend, why I am not among the most gladsome of earth." "Oh! how true is the proverb--how squarely the proverb hits the nail upon the head when it says: It takes nine tailors to make one man. The proverb is applicable to you," replied Madok. "It takes just as many asses to make one miller, friend Brotaer--or, I should rather say, Seigneur Windmill!" returned Paskou the Long. "Go to, and grind your grain!" "Well answered, Seigneur of the Needle and Thread!" said Madok. "And yet, I repeat it--what a poor, inconsequential one-ninth of a man you are! There you are, whimpering and all in a fright as you speak of monseigneur, of monseigneur our Governor. Aye, your long face frowns and becomes still longer. And yet, just tell me, when you start to speak of a good fat pig, good and fat, a pig with such a belly that he can hardly move his body, so club-cheeked that one can no longer see his little peepers, hidden under three folds of fat--tell me, is it not true that then your long face grows longer still--so much do you rejoice, so brimful of admiration are you when you speak of such a fat and incomparable pig? How comes it, then, my friend, that you do not likewise rejoice when you speak of monseigneur--of monseigneur our Governor? Answer my question." The wedding guests received with loud outbursts of laughter the allusion of Madok the miller to the enormous obesity of Monseigneur the Duke of Chaulnes, the Governor of Brittany, whom the people nicknamed the Fat Pig, and whom all classes execrated on account of his severity, his haughtiness and his merciless exactions. Paskou the Long waited until the hilarity of the audience subsided, and then proceeded: