unselled.

"Good heaven! The remedy is worse than the disease," she cried.

"Decide in a hurry. There is no time to wait. You are all bound for
perdition," he assured her, cheerfully.

"Perdition then! I won't do it." Temptation number two, for Pamina.

"Very well, it is your time to die!" Monostatos cried, and proceeded
to kill her, but Sarastro entered just in time to encourage her.

"Indeed it is not--your schedule is wrong, Monostatos," Sarastro
assured him.

"I must look after the mother, then, since the daughter has escaped
me," Monostatos remarked, comforting himself as well as he could.

"Oh don't chastise my mother," Pamina cried.

"A little chastising won't hurt her in the least," Sarastro assured
her. "I know all about how she prowls around here, and if only Tamino
resists his temptations, you will be united and your mother sent back
to her own domain where she belongs. If he survives the ordeals we
have set before him, he will deserve to marry an orphan." All this was
doubtless true, but it annoyed Pamina exceedingly. As soon as Sarastro
had sung of the advantages of living in so delightful a place as the
temple, he disappeared, not in the usual way, but by walking off, and
the scene changed.

_Scene III_

Tamino and the speaker who accompanied the priests and talked for them
were in a large hall, and Papageno was there also.

"You are again to be left here alone; and I caution ye to be silent,"
the speaker advised as he went out.

The second priest said:

"Papageno, whoever breaks the silence here, brings down thunder and
lightning upon himself." He, too, went out.

"That's pleasant," Papageno remarked.

"You are only to think it is pleasant--not to mention it," Tamino
cautioned. Meantime, Papageno, who couldn't hold his tongue to save
his life, grew thirsty. And he no sooner became aware of it, than an
old woman entered with a cup of water.

"Is that for me?" he asked.

"Yes, my love," she replied, and Papageno drank it.

"Well, next time when you wish to quench my thirst you must bring
something besides water--don't forget. Sit down here, old lady, it is
confoundedly dull," the irrepressible Papageno said, and the old lady
sat. "How old are you, anyway?"

"Just eighteen years and two minutes," she answered.

"Um--it is the two minutes that does it, I suppose," Papageno
reflected, looking at her critically.

"Does anybody love you?" he asked, by way of satisfying his curiosity.