MABEL: It seems so long!
FREDERIC: Swear that, till then, you will be true to me.
MABEL: Yes, I'll be strong!
By all the Stanleys dead and gone, I swear it!

ENSEMBLE

Oh, here is love, and here is truth,
And here is food for joyous laughter:
He (she) will be faithful to his (her) sooth
Till we are wed, and even after.
Oh, here is love, etc.

(FREDERIC rushes to window and leaps out)

MABEL: (almost fainting) No, I am brave! Oh, family descent,
How great thy charm, thy sway how excellent!
Come one and all, undaunted men in blue,
A crisis, now, affairs are coming to!

(Enter POLICE, marching in single file)

SERGEANT: Though in body and in mind
POLICE: Tarantara! tarantara!
SERGEANT: We are timidly inclined,
POLICE: Tarantara!
SERGEANT: And anything but blind
POLICE: Tarantara! tarantara!
SERGEANT: To the danger that's behind,
POLICE: Tarantara!
SERGEANT: Yet, when the danger's near,
POLICE: Tarantara! tarantara!
SERGEANT: We manage to appear
POLICE: Tarantara!
SERGEANT: As insensible to fear
As anybody here,
As anybody here.
POLICE: Tarantara! tarantara!, etc.

MABEL: Sergeant, approach! Young Frederic was to have led you
to death and glory.
POLICE: That is not a pleasant way of putting it.
MABEL: No matter; he will not so lead you, for he has allied
himself once more with his old associates.
POLICE: He has acted shamefully!
MABEL: You speak falsely. You know nothing about it. He has
acted nobly.
POLICE: He has acted nobly!
MABEL: Dearly as I loved him before, his heroic sacrifice to
his sense of duty has endeared him to me tenfold; but
if it was his duty to constitute himself my foe, it is
likewise my duty to regard him in that light. He has
done his duty. I will do mine. Go ye and do yours.
(Exit MABEL)
POLICE: Right oh!
SERGEANT: This is perplexing.
POLICE: We cannot understand it at all.