Ximenung: What heritage is that, Prince Meliflor?
Meliflor: It is all the earth. To labour is to lose it.
Moomoomon: If we could toil we should gain some spot of earth that our labour would seem to make our own. How happily the workers come home at evening.
Meliflor: It would be to lose all.
Prince of Zoon: How lose it, Meliflor?
Meliflor: To us alone the idle hours are given. The sky, the fields, the woods, the summer winds are for us alone. All others put the earth to uses. This or that field has this or that use; here one may go and another may not. They have each their bit of earth and become slaves to its purpose. But for us, ah! for us, is all; the gift of the idle hours.
Some: Hurrah! Hurrah for the idle hours.
Zoon: Heigho. The idle hours weary me.
Meliflor: They give us all the earth and sky to contemplate. Both are for us.
Moomoomon: True. Let us drink, and speak of the blue sky.