"Then swear you'll be forever true," she urged.
"Certainly—since there is no other way out of it." And it was no sooner said than the old lady became a most entrancing young one, about eighteen years old.
"Well, may I never doubt a woman when she tells me her age again!" Papageno muttered, staring at her. As he was about to embrace her, the speaker shouted:
"Away; he isn't worthy of you." This left Papageno in a nice fix, and both he and the girl were led away as the Genii appeared.
The Genii began to sing that Pamina had gone demented, and no wonder. She almost at once proved that this was true, by coming in carrying a dagger; and she made a pass at the whole lot of them. No one could blame her. She thought each of them was Tamino.
"She's had too much trouble," the penetrating Genii declared among themselves. "And now we'll set her right." They were about to do so when she undertook to stab herself, but they interfered and told her she mustn't.
"What if Tamino should hear you! It would make him feel very badly," they remonstrated. At once she became all right again.
"Is he alive? Just let me look at him, and I'll be encouraged to wait awhile." So they took her away to see Tamino.
Then two men dressed in armour came in and said:
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He who would wander on this path of tears and toiling, Needs water, fire, and earth for his assoiling, |