When, in the next scene, Mephistopheles again appears, Faust is in a very different state of mind, and Mephistopheles is also in a different shape. He is decked out with silken mantle and with cock-feathers in his hat, ready for any devilry. Faust is in the depths of morbid despair and bitterness at the thought of life: 'What from the world have I to gain?-- _Thou must renounce! renounce! refrain!_ Such is the everlasting song That fills our ears our whole life long ... With horror day by day I wake And weeping watch the morning break To think that each returning sun Shall see fulfilled no wish of mine--not one.' He vows he would rather die. 'And yet,' sarcastically remarks Mephisto, 'some one a night or two ago did not drink a certain brown liquid.' Stung by the sarcasm, Faust breaks out into curses against life, against love and hope, and faith ... and 'cursed be patience most of all!' Here is the devil's opportunity. 'Life is yours yet, and all its pleasures. Of what's beyond you nothing know. Give up all this morbid thinking, these dreams and self-delusions! Be a man! Enjoy life! Plunge into pleasures of the senses! I will be your guide and show you the life worth living!' In an ecstasy of embitterment and despair, though fully conscious that such a life can never bring him satisfaction and happiness, Faust exclaims: 'What wilt _thou_, poor devil, give me? Was the human spirit, in its aspirations, ever understood by such as _thou_?... And yet--hast thou the food that never satiates--hast thou red gold--hast thou love, passionate faithless love--hast thou the fruits that rot before one plucks them--hast thou the fruits of that tree of sensual pleasure which daily puts forth new blossoms--then done! I accept.' 'But if,' he adds (and, alas, I must give merely the sense of these noble verses--for all translation is so unutterably flat)--'if I ever lay myself on the bed of idle self-content, if ever thou canst fool me with these phantoms of the senses, if ever I say to the passing moment, _Stay; thou art so fair!_--then let my life be ended. This wager I offer thee.' 'Topp!' ('Done!') exclaims Mephistopheles; and, as you know, the compact is signed by Faust with his own blood. You will observe that here there is no mention, as in the old legend, of any term of years--the compact is _for life_. Of what may come after this life Faust makes no mention in his wager. He expressly says that all he cares about, all he can know, is _this_ life, and that he will hear nothing about any future life. This may be agnosticism or whatever else we like to call it, but it is not formally selling one's soul, with or without one's body, for a _future_ life and for all eternity.