Part 30 (1/2)

FAUST

I know not, should I do it?

MEPHISTOPHELES

Ask you, pray?

Yourself, perhaps, would keep the bubble?

Then I suggest, 'twere fair and just To spare the lovely day your l.u.s.t, And spare to me the further trouble.

You are not miserly, I trust?

I rub my hands, in expectation tender-

(He places the casket in the press, and locks it again.)

Now quick, away!

The sweet young maiden to betray, So that by wish and will you bend her; And you look as though To the lecture-hall you were forced to go,- As if stood before you, gray and loath, Physics and Metaphysics both!

But away!

[Exeunt.

MARGARET (with a lamp)

It is so close, so sultry, here!

(She opens the window)

And yet 'tis not so warm outside.

I feel, I know not why, such fear!- Would mother came!-where can she bide?

My body's chill and shuddering,- I'm but a silly, fearsome thing!

(She begins to sing while undressing)

There was a King in Thule, Was faithful till the grave,- To whom his mistress, dying, A golden goblet gave.

Naught was to him more precious; He drained it at every bout: His eyes with tears ran over, As oft as he drank thereout.

When came his time of dying, The towns in his land he told, Naught else to his heir denying Except the goblet of gold.

He sat at the royal banquet With his knights of high degree, In the lofty hall of his fathers In the Castle by the Sea.

There stood the old carouser, And drank the last life-glow; And hurled the hallowed goblet Into the tide below.

He saw it plunging and filling, And sinking deep in the sea: Then fell his eyelids forever, And never more drank he!

(She opens the press in order to arrange her clothes, and perceives the casket of jewels.)

How comes that lovely casket here to me?

I locked the press, most certainly.

'Tis truly wonderful! What can within it be?

Perhaps 'twas brought by some one as a p.a.w.n, And mother gave a loan thereon?

And here there hangs a key to fit: I have a mind to open it.