[Musical excerpt]

and a trio.  Over this music Mefistofele carries on converse with God.  He begs to disagree with the sentiments of the angelic hymn.  Wandering about the earth, he had observed man and found him in all things contemptible, especially in his vanity begotten by what he called “reason”; he, the miserable little cricket, vaingloriously jumping out of the grass in an effort to poke his nose among the stars, then falling back to chirp, had almost taken away from the devil all desire to tempt him to evil doings.  “Knowest thou Faust?” asks the Divine Voice; and Mefistofele tells of the philosopher’s insatiable thirst for wisdom.  Then he offers the wager.  The scene, though brief, follows Goethe as closely as Goethe follows the author of the Book of Job:—­

Now, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.

And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou?  Then Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it.

And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil?

Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought? . . .

And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand.  So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.

Boito treats the interview in what he calls a Dramatic Interlude, which gives way to the third movement, a Vocal Scherzo, starting off with a chorus of Cherubim, who sing in fugacious thirds and droning dactyls:—­

[Musical excerpt—­“siam nimbi volanti dai limbi, nei santi”]

It is well to note particularly Boito’s metrical device.  He seemingly counted much on the effect of incessantly reiterated dactyls.  Not only do his Cherubim adhere to the form without deviation, but Helen and Pantalis use it also in the scene imitated from Goethe’s Classical Walpurgis Night,—­use it for an especial purpose, as we shall see presently.  Rapid syllabication is also a characteristic of the song of the witches in the scene on the Brocken; but the witches sing in octaves and fifths except when they kneel to do homage to Mefistofele; then their chant sounds like the responses to John of Leyden’s prayer by the mutinous soldiers brought to their knees in “Le Prophete.”  Not at all ineptly, Mefistofele, who does not admire the Cherubs, likens their monotonous cantillation to the hum of bees.  A fourth movement consists of a concluding psalmody, in which the Cherubs twitter, Earthly Penitents supplicate the Virgin, and the combined choirs, celestial and terrestrial, hymn the Creator.