Moon. Be easy on that score. May the Fates never trouble me more than you are likely to! Talk as much as you please, and although, as I believe you know, I am partial to silence, I will willingly listen and reply, to oblige you.
Earth. Do you hear the delightful sound made by the heavenly bodies in motion?
Moon. To tell you the truth, I hear nothing.
Earth. Nor do I; save only the whistling of the wind, which blows from my poles to the equator, and from the equator to the poles, and which is far from musical. But Pythagoras asserts that the celestial spheres make an incredibly sweet harmony, and that you take part in the concert, and are the eighth chord of this universal lyre. As for me, I am so deafened by my own noise that I hear nothing.
Moon. I also am doubtless deafened, since I hear no more than you. But it is news to me that I am a chord.
Earth. Now let us change the subject. Tell me; are you really inhabited, as thousands of ancient and modern philosophers affirm—from Orpheus to De Lalande? In spite of all my efforts to prolong these horns of mine, which men call mountains and hills, and from the summits of which I look at you in silence, I have failed to discern a single one of your inhabitants. Yet I am told that a certain David Fabricius, whose eyes were keener than those of Lynceus, at one time observed your people extending their linen to be dried by the sun.
Moon. I know nothing about your horns. I will admit that I am inhabited.
Earth. What colour are your men?
Moon. What men?