Martha's Garden

Martha's garden, later. Faust and Gretchen walking. She asks directly: she can see he is a good man, but she doesn't think he makes much of religion. He must believe in something. Faust gives the answer he has already half-given in the garden: he cannot name it, but look at the heavens, at the earth, at what flows through all living things — call it happiness, heart, love, God, whatever name you choose. Gretchen accepts this as genuine feeling, even if she doesn't know what to call it theologically.

Then she says something unexpected. She has been thinking about his companion. Mephistopheles gives her a shudder she cannot explain — something in his face, his manner, tells her he is not a man she could love. She finds him physically repellent in a way she cannot account for. Faust dismisses it; instinct, she must be imagining. She is not imagining. The instinct is accurate. Goethe is careful here: Gretchen is innocent, but not stupid. Her body has detected something.

She then mentions, carefully, that she will arrange the draught for the night again — put it in her mother's evening drink so that the old woman sleeps deeply and is not disturbed. Faust is shaken by the word "again." He says nothing. Whatever he meant to say about the mother, about the dangers of the draught, about the responsibility he bears — he says nothing. She has already given the draught; the mother has already slept through what has already happened. Gretchen does not yet know what the draught cost her mother.