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, Goethe and Hugo?" "Not a doubt of it." "And philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Bacon, Kant?" "Why not?" "And scientists like Euclid, Archimedes, Copernicus, Newton, Pascal?" "I should think so." "And famous actors, and singers, and composers, and--and photographers?" "I could almost swear to it." "Then, dear boy, since they have gone ahead as far as we and even farther, why have not those great Selenites tried to start a communication with the Earth? Why have they not fired a projectile from the regions lunar to the regions terrestrial?" "Who says they have not done so?" asked Barbican, coolly. "Attempting such a communication," observed the Captain, "would certainly be much easier for them than for us, principally for two reasons. First, attraction on the Moon's surface being six times less than on the Earth's, a projectile could be sent off more rapidly; second, because, as this projectile need be sent only 24 instead of 240 thousand miles, they could do it with a quantity of powder ten times less than what we should require for the same purpose." "Then I ask again," said the Frenchman; "why haven't they made such an attempt?" "And I reply again," answered Barbican. "How do you know that they have not made such an attempt?" "Made it? When?" "Thousands of years ago, before the invention of writing, before even the appearance of Man on the Earth." "But the bullet?" asked Ardan, triumphantly; "Where's the bullet? Produce the bullet!"