We are next in a room of the castle before the would-be rescuers arrive.  Pamina has tried to escape, and is put in chains by her keeper, the Moor Monostatos.  She weeps because of her misery, and repulses the protestations of love with which her jailer plagues her.  Papageno enters the room, and he and the jailer run in opposite directions at sight of each other—­Papageno frightened by the complexion of the blackamoor, Monostatos terror-stricken at the sight of a man in feathers.  Returning, Papageno convinces himself of the identity of Pamina with the daughter of the Queen of Night, tells her of Tamino, who is coming for her with a heart full of love, and promptly they sing of the divine dignity of the marital state.  It is the duet, “Bei Mannern weiche Liebe fuhlen,” or “La dove prende, amor ricetto,” familiar to concert-rooms, and the melody to some hymnals.  A story goes that Mozart had to write this duet three or five times before it would pass muster in the censorious eyes of Schikaneder.  After the opera had made good its success, the duet as we have it to-day alternated at the performance with a more ornate version—­in all likelihood one of the earlier forms in which Mozart cast it.

The three boys—­genii they are, and if I were stage-manager they should fly like Peter Pan—­lead Tamino into a grove wherein stand three temples dedicated respectively to Wisdom, Nature, and Reason.  The precinct is sacred; the music tells us that—­the halo streaming from sustained notes of flutes and clarinets, the muted trumpets, the solemn trombones in softest monotone, the placid undulations of the song sung by the violins, the muffled, admonitory beats of the kettledrums.  The genii leave Tamino after admonishing him to be “steadfast, patient, and silent.”  Conscious of a noble purpose, the hero boldly approaches the Temple of Reason, but before he can enter its portals, is stopped by an imperative injunction from within:  “Back!” He essays the Temple of Nature, and is turned away again by the ominous word.  Out of the Temple of Wisdom steps an aged priest, from whom he learns that Sarastro is master within, and that no one is privileged to enter whose heart, like his, harbors hatred and vengeful thoughts.  Tamino thinks Sarastro fully deserving of hatred and revenge, and is informed that he had been deceived by a woman—­one of the sex “that does little, chatters much.”  Tamino asks if Pamina lives, but the priest is bound by an oath to say nothing on that subject until “the hand of friendship shall lead him to an eternal union within the sanctuary.”  When shall night vanish and the light appear?  Oracular voices answer, “Soon, youth, or never!” Does Pamina live?  The voices:  “Pamina still lives!” Thus comforted, he sings his happiness, filling the pauses in his song with interludes on the flute, bringing to his feet the wild beasts and forest creatures of all sorts.  He hears Papageno’s syrinx, and at length finds the fowler with Monostatos;