Mephistopheles. [_as above_] Let Error now their eyes unclose, The devil's joke to understand! [_He vanishes with_ /Faust/. _The fellows start back from one another._ Siebel. What's the matter? Altmayer. How now? Frosch. Was that your nose? Brander. [_to_ /Siebel/] And yours is in my hand! Altmayer. It was a stroke shot through my every limb! Give me a chair!--I faint! My eyes grow dim! Frosch. Now tell me only what has been the matter? Siebel. Where is the fellow? Could I catch him here, His life out of his body I should batter! Altmayer. I saw him just this instant disappear, Riding upon a wine-cask--I declare I feel a weight like lead about my feet. [_Turning to the table._] I wonder if his d----d wine still be there! Siebel. There's not a single drop; 'twas all a cheat. Frosch. And yet methinks that I was drinking wine. Brander. And I could swear I saw a clustered vine. Altmayer. Let none now say the age of miracles is past! Scene III. _Witches' Kitchen._ _A caldron is seen boiling on a low hearth. Numbers of strange fantastic figures tumbling up and down in the smoke. A Mother_-/Cat-Ape/[*n8] _sits beside the caldron, taking off the scum, and keeping it from boiling over. An Old_ /Cat-Ape/ _beside her warming himself with his young ones. Roof and walls are covered over with a strange assortment of furniture, and implements used by witches._ _Enter_ /Faust/ _and_ /Mephistopheles./ Faust. I cannot brook this brainless bedlam stuff! And must it be that I shall cast my slough In this hotbed of all unreasoned doing? Shall an old beldam give me what I lack? And can her pots and pans, with all their brewing, Shake off full thirty summers from my back? Woe's me, if thou canst boast no better scheme! My brightest hopes are vanished as a dream. Has Nature then, and has some noble Spirit, No balsam for the body to repair it? Mephistopheles. My friend, with your great sense I cannot but be smitten! Nature, too, boasts a plan to renovate your age; But in a wondrous volume it is written, And wondrous is the chapter and the page. Faust. But I must know it. Mephistopheles. Good! the poorest man may try it, Without or witch, or quack, or gold to buy it; And yet it works a certain cure. Go take thee with the peasant to the moor, And straight begin to hew and hack; Confine thee there, with patient mood, Within the narrow beaten track, And nourish thee with simplest food; Live with the brute a brute, and count it not too low To dung the corn-fields thine own hands shall mow; Than this I know on earth no med'cine stronger, To make, by fourscore years, both soul and body younger!