ot against the idle hours, Moomoomon.

MOOMOOMON: Why then, lord of the sweet lands?

MELIFLOR: Because in idleness are all things, all things good.

XIMENUNG: Heigho, I am weary of the idle hours.

MOOMOOMON: You would work then?

XIMENUNG: No-o. That is not our destiny.

MELIFLOR: Let us be well contented with our lot. The idle hours are our
sacred treasure.

XIMENUNG: Yes, I am well contented, and yet ...

MOOMOOMON (_contemplatively_): And yet ...

XIMENUNG: I sometimes dream that were it not for our glorious state, and
this tradition of exalted ease, it might, it might be pleasant ...

MOOMOOMON: To toil, to labour, to raid the golden hoards.

XIMENUNG: Yes, Moomoomon.

MELIFLOR: Never! Never!

OTHERS: No. No. No.

ANOTHER: And yet ...

MELIFLOR: No, never. We should lose our glorious ease, the heritage that
none may question.

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.

MELIFLOR (_lifting mug_): And all our glorious heritage.

XIMENUNG (_putting hand to mug_): Aye, it is glorious, and yet ...

[_Enter the_ RAIDERS _of the Golden Hoard with spears and, in the other
hand, leather wallets the size of your fist; these they cast on the
heap. Nuggets the size of big filberts escape from some so that the heap
is partly leather and partly gold. These wallets should be filled with
nuggets of lead, about the size described, not one lump of lead and not
sawdust or rags. Nothing destroys illusion on the stage more than a
cannon ball falling with a soft pat. They look scowlingly at the
Princes._

[_Exeunt the_ RAIDERS. _The Princes have