"What has brought you to Hanover, dear Professor?" he asked.
"The moon! the moon! I have come after the moon."
"The moon! How can that be? She shines over Dorpat as surely as over our roofs in Hanover."
"I've just seen her."
"Impossible. The moon is new. Besides, it is broad daylight."
"New! of course she is new. Only made lately."
Professor Rollman was puzzled.
"The moon is certainly as old as the world, and even if we give the world so limited an age as four thousand years—"
"I was not allowed to touch her, scarcely to breathe near her," interrupted Maedler.
"My dear colleague, what is the matter with you? You are—what do you say, seen, touched, breathed on the moon? The distance of the moon from the earth is two hundred and forty thousand miles."