out evil spirits Faust has painted a mystic pentagram,
a figure with five points, the outer angle of which, being inaccurately
drawn, had left a gap through which Mephisto had slipped in; but being
once in, as in a mouse-trap, he cannot get out again.

As Faust now seems inclined to keep him prisoner, Mephistopheles summons
spirits, who sing Faust to sleep. Then he calls a rat to gnaw a gap in
the pentagram, and escapes.

When, in the next scene, Mephistopheles again appears, Faust is in a
very different state of mind, and Mephistopheles is also in a different
shape. He is decked out with silken mantle and with cock-feathers in his
hat, ready for any devilry. Faust is in the depths of morbid despair and
bitterness at the thought of life:

'What from the world have I to gain?--
_Thou must renounce! renounce! refrain!_
Such is the everlasting song
That fills our ears our whole life long ...
With horror day by day I wake
And weeping watch the morning break
To think that each returning sun
Shall see fulfilled no wish of mine--not one.'

He vows he would rather die. 'And yet,' sarcastically remarks Mephisto,
'some one a night or two ago did not drink a certain brown liquid.'
Stung by the sarcasm, Faust breaks out into curses against life, against
love and hope, and faith ... and 'cursed be patience most of all!'

Here is the devil's opportunity. 'Life is yours yet, and all its
pleasures. Of what's beyond you nothing know. Give up all this morbid
thinking, these dreams and self-delusions! Be a man! Enjoy life! Plunge
into pleasures of the senses! I will be your guide and show you the life
worth living!'

In an ecstasy of embitterment and despair, though fully conscious that
such a life can never bring him satisfaction and happiness, Faust
exclaims: 'What wilt _thou_, poor devil, give me? Was the human spirit,
in its aspirations, ever understood by such as _thou_?... And yet--hast
thou the food that never satiates--hast thou red gold--hast thou love,
passionate faithless love--hast thou the fruits that rot before one
plucks them--hast thou the fruits of that tree of sensual pleasure which
daily puts forth new blossoms--then done! I accept.' 'But if,' he adds
(and, alas, I must give merely the sense of these noble verses--for all
translation is so unutterably flat)--'if I ever lay myself on the bed of
idle self-content, if ever thou canst fool me with these phantoms of the
senses