ng to hear--

_Mephistopheles_. Would I'd a happier tale for your ear!
I hope you'll forgive me this one for repeating:
Your husband is dead and sends you a greeting.

_Martha_. Is dead? the faithful heart! Woe! Woe!
My husband dead! I, too, shall go!

_Margaret_. Ah, dearest Dame, despair not thou!

_Mephistopheles_ Then, hear the mournful story now!

_Margaret_. Ah, keep me free from love forever,
I should never survive such a loss, no, never!

_Mephistopheles_. Joy and woe, woe and joy, must have each other.

_Martha_. Describe his closing hours to me!

_Mephistopheles_. In Padua lies our departed brother,
In the churchyard of St. Anthony,
In a cool and quiet bed lies sleeping,
In a sacred spot's eternal keeping.

_Martha_. And this was all you had to bring me?

_Mephistopheles_. All but one weighty, grave request!
"Bid her, when I am dead, three hundred masses sing me!"
With this I have made a clean pocket and breast.

_Martha_. What! not a medal, pin nor stone?
Such as, for memory's sake, no journeyman will lack,
Saved in the bottom of his sack,
And sooner would hunger, be a pauper--

_Mephistopheles_. Madam, your case is hard, I own!
But blame him not, he squandered ne'er a copper.
He too bewailed his faults with penance sore,
Ay, and his wretched luck bemoaned a great deal more.

_Margaret_. Alas! that mortals so unhappy prove!
I surely will for him pray many a requiem duly.

_Mephistopheles_. You're worthy of a spouse this moment; truly
You are a child a man might love.

_Margaret_. It's not yet time for that, ah no!

_Mephistopheles_. If not a husband, say, meanwhile a beau.
It is a choice and heavenly blessing,
Such a dear thing to one's bosom pressing.

_Margaret_. With us the custom is not so.

_Mephistopheles_. Custom or not! It happens, though.

_Martha_. Tell on!

_Mephistopheles_. I slood beside his bed, as he lay dying,
Better than dung it was somewhat,--
Half-rotten straw; but then, he died as Christian ought,
And found an unpaid score, on Heaven's account-book lying.
"How must I hate myself," he cried, "inhuman!
So to forsake my business and my woman!
Oh! the remembrance murders me!
Would she might still forgive me this side heaven!"

_Martha_ [_weeping_]. The dear good man! he has been long forgiven.

_Mephistopheles_. "But God knows, I was less to blame than she."

_Martha_. A lie! And at death's door! abominable!

_Mephistopheles_. If I to judge of men half-way