t time as she
returns from church. The third act takes place in Margaret's garden.
Faust and Mephistopheles enter secretly, and deposit a casket of jewels
upon the doorstep. Margaret, woman-like, is won by their beauty, and
cannot resist putting them on. Faust finds her thus adorned, and wooes
her passionately, while Mephistopheles undertakes to keep Dame Martha,
her companion, out of the way. The act ends by Margaret yielding to
Faust's prayers and entreaties. In the fourth act Margaret is left
disconsolate. Faust has deserted her, and Valentine comes home to find
his sister's love-affair the scandal of the town. He fights a duel with
Faust, whom he finds lurking under his sister's window, and dies cursing
Margaret with his last breath. During this act occurs the church scene,
which is sometimes performed after Valentine's death and sometimes
before it. Margaret is kneeling in the shadowy minster, striving to
pray, but the voice of conscience stifles her half-formed utterances. In
Gounod's libretto, the intangible reproaches which Margaret addresses
to herself are materialised in the form of Mephistopheles, a proceeding
which is both meaningless and inartistic, though perhaps dramatically
unavoidable. In the,' last act, after a short scene on the Brocken and a
conventional ballet, which are rarely performed in England, we are taken
to the prison where Margaret lies condemned to death for the murder of
her child. Faust is introduced by the aid of Mephistopheles, and tries
to persuade her to fly with him. Weak and wandering though she is, she
refuses, and dies to the chant of an angelic choir, while Faust is
dragged down to the abyss by Mephistopheles. Gounod's music struggles
nobly with the tawdriness and sentimentality of the libretto. A good
deal of the first and last acts is commonplace and conventional, but the
other three contain beauties of a high order. The life and gaiety of the
Kermesse scene in the second act, the sonorous dignity of Valentine's
invocation of the cross, and the tender grace of Faust's salutation--the
last a passage which might have been written by Mozart--are too familiar
to need more than a passing reference. In the fourth act also there is
much noble music. Gounod may be forgiven even for the soldiers' chorus,
in consideration of the masculine vigour of the duel terzetto--a
purified reminiscence of Meyerbeer--and the impressive church scene. But
the most characteristic part of the work is, aft