It's midnight, and in his twilight graveyard world, Death sits alone with his scythe. The chill night wind moans in the linden trees, the shades of shadows flee each other in the ghostly gloom, and death makes music on his violin, striking his heels against a hollow tomb. He is lonely in his desolate world, and decides that he will go to life, and play his violin and mingle with the living, whose lives are full of gaiety.