The Count goes into the chamber to search for the page, giving Susanna a chance to explain, and the nimble-witted women are ready for him when he comes back confused, confounded, and ready to ask forgiveness of his wife, who becomes tearful and accusing, telling him at length that the story of the page’s presence was all an invention to test him.  But the letter giving word of the assignation?  Written by Figaro.  He then shall be punished.  Forgiveness is deserved only by those willing to forgive.  All is well, and the Countess gives her hand to be kissed by her lord.  Enters Figaro with joyous music to announce that all’s ready for the wedding; trumpets sounding, pipes tootling, peasants singing and dancing.  The Count throws a damper upon his exuberant spirits.  How about that letter?  In spite of the efforts of the Countess and Susanna to make him confess its authorship, Figaro stoutly insists that he knows nothing of it.  The Count summons Marcellina, but before she arrives, the drunken gardener Antonio appears to tell the Count that some one had leaped out of the salon window and damaged his plants and pots.  Confusion overwhelms the women.  But Figaro’s wits are at work.  He laughs loudly and accuses Antonio of being too tipsy to know what had happened.  The gardener sticks to his story and is about to describe the man who came like a bolt from the window, when Figaro says it was he made the leap.  He was waiting in the salon to see Susanna, he explains, when he heard the Count’s footsteps, and, fearing to meet him because of the decoy letter, he had jumped from the window and got a sprained ankle, which he offers in evidence.  The orchestra changes key and tempo, and begins a new inquisition with pitiless reiteration:—­

[Musical excerpt]

Antonio produces Cherubino’s commission, “These, then, are your papers?” The Count takes the commission, opens it, and the Countess recognizes it.  With whispers and signs the women let Figaro know what it is, and he is ready with the explanation that the page had left the paper with him.  Why?  It lacked—­the women come again to his rescue—­it lacked the seal.  The Count tears up the paper in his rage at being foiled again.  But his allies are at hand, in the persons of Marcellina, Bartolo, and Basilio, who appear with the accusing contract, signed by Figaro.  The Count takes the case under advisement, and the act ends with Figaro’s enemies sure of triumph and his friends dismayed.

The third act plays in a large hall of the palace decorated for the wedding.  In a duet ("Crudel! perche finora”) the Count renews his addresses to Susanna.  She, to help along the plot to unmask him, consents to meet him in the garden.  A wonderful grace rests upon the music of the duet, which Mozart’s genius makes more illuminative than the words.  Is it Susanna’s native candor, or goodness, or mischievousness, or her embarrassment which prompts her to answer “yes” when “no” was expected and “no” when the Count had