Without knowing it they had already arrived at the palace of Sarastro, and at that very moment Pamina, the Queen's daughter, was in great peril.
In a beautiful room, furnished with divans, and everything in Egyptian style, sat Monostatos, a Moor, who was in the secrets of Sarastro, who had stolen the Princess. Monostatos had just had the Princess brought before him and had listened malignantly to her pleadings to be set free.
"I do not fear death," she was saying; "but it is certain that if I do not return home, my mother will die of grief."
"Well, I have had enough of thy meanings, and I shall teach thee to be more pleasing; so minions," calling to the guards and servants of the castle, "chain this tearful young woman's hands, and see if it will not teach her to make herself more agreeable." As the slaves entered, to place the fetters upon her hands, the Princess fell senseless upon a divan.
"Away, away, all of you!" Monostatos cried, just as Papageno peeped in at the palace window.
"What sort of place is this?" Papageno said to himself, peering in curiously. "I think I will enter and see more of it." Stepping in, he saw the Princess senseless upon the divan, and the wretched Moor bending over her. At that moment the Moor turned round and saw Papageno. They looked at each other, and each was frightened half to death.
"Oh, Lord!" each cried at the same moment. "This must be the fiend himself."
"Oh, have mercy!" each shrieked at each other.
"Oh, spare my life," they yelled in unison, and then, at the same moment each fled from the other, by a different way. At the same instant, Pamina awoke from her swoon, and began to call pitiably for her mother. Papageno heard her and ventured back.
"She's a handsome damsel, and I'll take a chance, in order to rescue her," he determined, feeling half safe because of his chime of bells.
"Why, she is the very image of the Prince's miniature and so it must be the daughter of the Queen of the Night," he decided, taking another good look at her.
"Who art thou?" she asked him, plaintively.
"I do not know the name. But I am the daughter of the Queen of the Night."
"Well, I think you are, but to make sure"--He pulled from his pocket the portrait which had been given to him by the Prince and looked at it earnestly for a long time.