At length, when Mephisto, who finds it getting too hot even for him, comes again to Faust, he discovers him silently gazing at a weird sight—one that might well have sobered him. 'Look!' says Faust:
'Look! seest thou not in the far distance there,
Standing alone, that child, so pale and fair?
She seems to move so slowly, and with pain,
As if her feet were fettered by a chain.
I must confess, I almost seem to trace
My poor good Gretchen in her form and face.'
Mephistopheles answers:
'Let her alone! It's dangerous to look.
It's a mere lifeless ghoul, a spectre-spook.
Such bogeys to encounter is not good;
Their rigid stare freezes one's very blood,
And one is often almost turned to stone.
Medusa's head, methinks, to thee is known!'
But Faust will not be convinced. It is Gretchen—his 'poor good Gretchen' as he calls her. And what is that red bleeding gash around her neck? What terrible thought does it suggest!
'How strange that round her lovely neck,
That narrow band of red is laid
No broader than a knife's keen blade!'
'Quite right!' answers Mephistopheles with a ghastly joke—
'Quite right! I plainly see it's so.
Perseus cut off her head, you know.
She often carries it beneath her arm.'
He hurries Faust away. But soon these terrible presentiments are realized. Faust learns—how we are not told—that Gretchen is in prison, and condemned to death on the scaffold; for in her madness—yes, surely in madness—she has drowned her own child.
Instead of attempting to describe what follows, I shall offer a literal prose translation of some parts of the concluding scene, asking you to supply by your imagination, as best you may, the power and harmony of Goethe's wonderful verse.