"Hurrah!" cried M'Nicholl.
"That point settled," continued the Frenchman, "another question comes up to which I have not yet called your attention. When we get to the Moon, what shall we do there? How are we going to amuse ourselves? I'm afraid our life there will be awfully slow!"
His companions emphatically disclaimed the possibility of such a thing.
"You may deny it, but I know better, and knowing better, I have laid in my stores accordingly. You have but to choose. I possess a varied assortment. Chess, draughts, cards, dominoes—everything in fact, but a billiard table?"
"What!" exclaimed Barbican; "cumbered yourself with such gimcracks?"
"Such gimcracks are not only good to amuse ourselves with, but are eminently calculated also to win us the friendship of the Selenites."
"Friend Michael," said Barbican, "if the Moon is inhabited at all, her inhabitants must have appeared several thousand years before the advent of Man on our Earth, for there seems to be very little doubt that Luna is considerably older than Terra in her present state. Therefore, Selenites, if their brain is organized like our own, must have by this time invented all that we are possessed of, and even much which we are still to invent in the course of ages. The probability is that, instead of their learning from us, we shall have much to learn from them."
"What!" asked Ardan, "you think they have artists like Phidias, Michael Angelo and Raphael?"
"Certainly."
"And poets like Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakspeare, Göthe and Hugo?"