Isabella, ashamed and bewildered, recognises the madness of her thought, and succumbs to mute despair. But while Friedrich is displaying his utmost rigour afresh to the people, and delivering sentence on the prisoner, Isabella suddenly remembers the mournful fate of Marianne; like a lightning flash, she conceives the idea of gaining by stratagem what seems impossible through open force. At once she bounds from deepest sorrow to the height of mirth: to her lamenting brother, his downcast friend, the helpless throng, she turns with promise of the gayest escapade she will prepare for all of them, for the very Carnival which the State-holder had so strenuously forbidden shall be celebrated this time with unwonted spirit, as that dread rigorist had merely donned the garb of harshness the more agreeably to surprise the town by his hearty share in all the sport he had proscribed.