Chapter LXXXVII: Act I: The drama opens on Easter Sunday, at Frankfort-on-the-Main

Crowds of people of all conditions move in and out of the city gates. Among them appears a grey friar, an object of both reverence and dread to those near him. The aged _Dr. Faust_ and his pupil _Wagner_ descend from a height and enter upon the scene, shadowed by the friar, whose actions they discuss. _Faust_ returns to his laboratory, still at his heels the friar, who, unheeded, enters with him, and conceals himself in an alcove. _Faust_ gives himself to meditation, and upon opening the sacred volume, is startled by a shriek from the friar as he rushes from his place of concealment. _Faust_ makes the all-potent "sign of Solomon," which compels _Mefistofele_ to throw off his friar's disguise and to appear in his own person in the garb of a cavalier, with a black cloak upon his arm. In reply to _Faust's_ questionings, he declares himself the spirit that denieth all things, desiring only the complete ruin of the world, and a return to chaos and night. He offers to make _Faust_ the companion of his wanderings, upon certain conditions, to which the latter agrees, saying: "If thou wilt bring me one hour of peace, in which my soul may rest--if thou wilt unveil the world and myself before me--if I may find cause to say to some flying moment, 'Stay, for thou art blissful,' then let me die, and let hell's depths engulf me." The contract completed, _Mefistofele_ spreads his cloak, and both disappear through the air.

The first scene of this act gains its interest from the reflection in the music of the bustle and animation of the Easter festival. The score plastically follows the many changing incidents of the scene upon the stage. Conspicuous in the episodes in _Faust's_ laboratory are _Faust's_ beautiful air, "Dai campi, dai prati" (From the fields and from the meadows); and _Mefistofele's_ proclamation of his identity, "Son lo spirito che nega" (I am the spirit that denieth).

Act II opens with the garden scene. _Faust_, rejuvenated, and under the name of _Henry_; _Margaret_, _Mefistofele_, and _Martha_ stroll here and there in couples, chatting and love-making. Thence _Mefistofele_ takes _Faust_ to the heights of the Brocken, where he witnesses the orgies of the Witches' Sabbath. The fiend is welcomed and saluted as their king. _Faust_, benumbed and stupefied, gazes into the murky sky, and experiences there a vision of _Margaret_, pale, sad, and fettered with chains.

In this act the garden scene is of entrancing grace. It contains _Faust's_ "Colma il tuo cor d'un palpito" (Flood thou thy heart with all the bliss), and the quartet of farewell, with which the scene ends, _Margaret_, with the gay and reckless laugh of ineffable bliss, exclaiming to _Faust_ that she loves him. The scene in the Brocken, besides the whirl of the witches' orgy, has a solo for _Mefistofele_, when the weird sisters present to him a glass globe, reflected in which he sees the earth. "Ecco il mondo" (Behold the earth).