In the interval which has elapsed since the death of Ase, our hero, now
in the prime of life, driven by his erratic spirit and love of
adventure, has landed upon the coast of Africa, after being fairly
hounded out of his own country by the ridicule and contempt of his
neighbors. This scene takes place in an oasis of the Great Desert, where
an Arab chief has pitched his tent, and where Peer, mounted on a stolen
white charger and clad in stolen silk and jeweled robes, has arrived in
the rôle of the prophet to the Bedouins. A bevy of Arabian girls are
dancing before him in oriental costume, pausing to render homage at
intervals to the supposed prophet, who reclines among cushions, drinking
coffee and smoking a long pipe. The music begins with a monotonous
rhythmical figure in the accompaniment, suggesting the beat of
tambourines and castanets, and the melody of the opening strain is weird
rather than bright, stealthily playful rather than openly gay, rising
soon to a considerable degree of excited movement. The trio, with its
double melody and its languorous warmth of cadence, tells of
increasingly involved figures in the dance and a more voluptuous,
seductive grace of motion among the dancers. Then the opening strain is
repeated, with its clash of tambourines, its tinkle of silver bangles
and anklets, and its mood of repressed, but jocose, humor, beneath a
flimsy veil of fictitious gravity.