"If only to honour the American nation," added Michel Ardan, "the only nation capable of making such an enterprise succeed—the only one that could have produced a President Barbicane! Ah! now I think of it, now that all our anxieties are over, what will become of us? We shall be as dull as stagnant water."
Barbicane and Nicholl made gestures of repudiation.
"But I foresaw this, my friends," resumed Michel Ardan. "You have only to say the word. I have chess, backgammon, cards, and dominoes at your disposition. We only want a billiard-table!"
"What?" asked Barbicane, "did you bring such trifles as those?"
"Certainly," answered Michel; "not only for our amusement, but also in the praiseworthy intention of bestowing them upon Selenite inns."
"My friend," said Barbicane, "if the moon is inhabited its inhabitants appeared some thousands of years before those of the earth, for it cannot be doubted that the moon is older than the earth. If, therefore, the Selenites have existed for thousands of centuries—if their brains are organised like that of human beings—they have invented all that we have invented, already, and even what we shall only invent in the lapse of centuries. They will have nothing to learn from us, and we shall have everything to learn from them."
"What!" answered Michel, "do you think they have had artists like
Phidias, Michael Angelo, or Raphael?"
"Yes."
"Poets like Homer, Virgil, Milton, Lamartine, and Hugo?"
"I am sure of it."