Carmen, Michaela comes back into the square. They espy each other,
and a sudden warmth and tenderness come upon Jose: after all, he loves
her dearly--and there is his old mother! His better self responds:
Jose, in imagination, sees the little house in the hills where he
lived as a boy before he went soldiering. He recalls vividly for the
first time in months, those who are faithful to him, and for a moment
he loves them as they love him. They speak together. Michaela gives
him the note from his mother. There is money in it: she has thought he
might be in debt, or in other trouble and need it. Jose is surprised
by the tears in his own eyes--it is a far cry from gay Seville to the
little house among the hills!

"Go back to mother, Michaela, tell her I am going to get leave as soon
as I can and am coming back to her and you. I am going to play fair.
There's not much in life, otherwise. Go home and tell her I am coming,
and I mean to make you both as happy as once I meant to."

His sudden tenderness enraptures the young girl, and kissing him she
sets out to leave Seville with a glad heart. Jose, left alone, on
guard, his life and thought interrupted by this incident of home and
faithfulness, leans thoughtfully upon his musket.

"It hasn't been quite right, and I am not happy. We'll change all
this," he meditates.

As the afternoon sun grows hot the citizens begin to creep within
doors for the _siesta_, as all Spanish life seems to grow tired and
still in the burning day. Suddenly the silence is broken by a scream
from over the way. Jose starts up and looks across.

"Hey, there! what the devil!" Zuniga shouts from the guard-house, and
runs out. "Hello, hello! Jose, look alive there! What's gone
wrong?--what the----" And the men start to run across the square.

"Help, help!" comes from the factory. "Will no one come? We're being
killed--the she-devil--look out for her--Carmen! Look out for her--she
has a knife!" Every one is screaming at once and trying each in his
own way to tell what has happened.

"Get in there, Jose, and bring out the girl. Arrest the gipsy; and you
men here get into this crowd and quiet it down. Make those girls shut
up. Why, what the devil, I say! one would think a lunatic asylum
loose. You've got the girl, Jose?" he calls across as the corporal
brings Carmen out. "Bring her over," and Zuniga starts across to meet
them, clattering on the cobblestones with his high heels.

"She knifed one of th