There is a change from the pretty garden of the first scene, with its idyllic music, to the gathering place of witches and warlocks, high up in the Brocken, in the second.  We witness the vile orgies of the bestial crew into whose circles Faust is introduced, and see how Mefistofele is acclaimed king and receives the homage.  Here Boito borrows a poetical conceit from Goethe’s scene in the witches’ kitchen, and makes it a vehicle for a further exposition of the character and philosophy of the devil.  Mefistofele has seated himself upon a rocky throne and been vested with the robe and symbols of state by the witches.  Now they bring to him a crystal globe, which he takes and discourses upon to the following effect (the translation is Theodore T. Barker’s):—­

  Lo, here is the world! 
    A bright sphere rising,
  Setting, whirling, glancing,
  Round the sun in circles dancing;
    Trembling, toiling,
    Yielding, spoiling,
  Want and plenty by turn enfold it—­
  This world, behold it! 
  On its surface, by time abraded,
  Dwelleth a vile race, defiled, degraded;
    Abject, haughty,
    Cunning, naughty,
  Carrying war and desolation
  From the top to the foundation
    Of creation. 
  For them Satan has no being;
    They scorn with laughter
    A hell hereafter,
      And heavenly glory
      As idle story. 
  Powers eternal!  I’ll join their laugh infernal
  Thinking o’er their deeds diurnal.  Ha!  Ha! 
    Behold the world!

He dashes the globe to pieces on the ground and thereby sets the witches to dancing.  To the antics of the vile crew Faust gives no heed; his eyes are fixed upon a vision of Margherita, her feet in fetters, her body emaciated, and a crimson line encircling her throat.  His love has come under the headsman’s axe!  In the Ride to Hell, which concludes Berlioz’s “Damnation de Faust,” the infernal horsemen are greeted with shouts in a language which the mystical Swedenborg says is the speech of the lower regions.  Boito also uses an infernal vocabulary.  His witches screech “Saboe har Sabbah!” on the authority of Le Loyer’s “Les Spectres.”

From the bestiality of the Brocken we are plunged at the beginning of the third act into the pathos of Margherita’s death.  The episode follows the lines laid down by Barbier and Carre in their paraphrase of Goethe, except that for the sake of the beautiful music of the duet (which Boito borrowed from his unfinished “Ero e Leandro"), we learn that Margherita had drowned her child.  Faust urges her to fly, but her poor mind is all awry.  She recalls the scene of their first meeting and of the love-making in Dame Martha’s garden, and the earlier music returns, as it does in Gounod’s score, and as it was bound to do.  At the end she draws back in horror from Faust, after uttering a prayer above the music of the celestial choir, just as the executioner appears.  Mefistofele pronounces her damned, but voices from on high proclaim her salvation.