"You never can make me love you again. No one can make me do anything. Free I was born, free I die."
The band in the arena strikes up a fanfare. There are loud vivos for Escamillo. Carmen starts to rush for the entrance. Driven to the fury of despair, his knife drawn, as it had been when he barred her way in the smugglers' camp, Don José confronts her. He laughs grimly.
"The man for whom they are shouting—he is the one for whom you have deserted me!"
"Let me pass!" is her defiant answer.
"That you may tell him how you have spurned me, and laugh with him over my misery!"
Again the crowd in the arena shouts: "Victory! Victory! Vivo, vivo, Escamillo, the toreador of Granada!"
A cry of triumph escapes Carmen.
"You love him!" hisses Don José.
"Yes, I love him! If I must die for it, I love him! Victory for Escamillo, victory! I go to the victor of the arena!"
She makes a dash for the entrance. Somehow she manages to get past the desperate man who has stood between her and the gates. She reaches the steps, her foot already touches the landing above them, when he overtakes her, and madly plunges his knife into her back. With a shriek heard above the shouts of the crowd within, she staggers, falls, and rolls lifeless down the steps into the square.