He is about to end his troubles and uncertainty in
death, when an Easter hymn sung in the distance by a chorus of villagers
seems to bid him stay his hand. With a quick revulsion of feeling he
calls on the powers below, and, rather to his surprise, Mephistopheles
promptly appears. In exchange for his soul, the devil offers him youth,
beauty, and love, and, as an earnest of what is to come, shows him a
vision of the gentle Margaret sitting at her spinning wheel. Faust is
enraptured, hastily signs the contract, and hurries away with his
attendant fiend.
The next act is taken up with a Kermesse in the market-place of a
country town. Valentine, the brother of Margaret, departs for the wars,
after confiding his sister to the care of his friend Siebel. During a
pause in the dances Faust salutes Margaret for the first 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.
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