The Wagnerian Romances Part 12

The "tabulature" gives the straight and narrow laws upon which a song must be constructed, to earn its singer the dignity of masters.h.i.+p. "Now take your seat in the singing-chair!" Kothner orders Walther at the close of his reading. "Here, in this chair?"

It is the tall carved chair in which he had cast himself earlier.

"As is the custom of the school!" Even so much of restraint as the obligation to sing on a given spot is repugnant to the spirit of the highborn youth, who yet is undertaking to satisfy the most law-ridden a.s.semblage he could have met with. He murmurs, taking the seat: "For your sake, beloved, it shall be done!"--"The singer sits!" announces Kothner. "Begin!" shouts Beckmesser out of sight.

From Beckmesser's cry "Begin!" Walther takes his cue, and simply vaulting into the seat of his Pegasus, casting the bridle upon the neck of inspiration, he directly before them all pours forth his full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art. He has never committed their canons, is ignorant of their conventions; he has genius, that is all, and its daring; is a poet born, not made; is at the moment, beside all the rest, uplifted by the divine fire of his love--and his song is right as some natural object, a crystal or a flower. Consummate as is the song, it has yet the character perfectly of an improvisation--the ideal improvisation, let us say--the gush, the rush, the profusion of lovely ornament, the unrestraint,--but essentially orderly, the unrestraint, like that of an army with banners, swarming, in only apparent confusion, up a height, to a.s.sured victory. The urge, the climbing effect of the song, are owing, it is plain enough, to Walther's being really inside of it, to his having cast his whole self into it, with his straining after a goal, his desperate necessity to win.

In this case, verily the style is the man. "Begin!"--runs the sense of that perfect song, "Thus shouted Spring in the woods, till they rang again! And as the sound died away in distant waves, in the distance a sound was born, drawing nearer and nearer in a mighty flood. It grows, it resounds, the woods re-echo with a mult.i.tude of sweet voices. Loud and clear, it sweeps anear, to what a torrent it is grown! Like clangour of bells rings the multiple voice of Joy! The forest, how readily it responds to the call which has wakened it anew to life, and entones the sweet canticle of Spring!"

The Marker's chalk is not idle; a number of workmanlike scratches have been heard. Walther has stopped short, jarred by the sound.

He resumes after a moment: "In a th.o.r.n.y hedge, devoured by envy and chagrin, Winter, in his armour of ill-will, cowers in hiding.

Amid the rustling of withered leaves, he sits spying with watchful eye and ear for a chance to bring to grief the happy singing...."

The singer bounds to his feet. "None the less, 'Begin!' The cry rang in my breast, when I was as yet wholly unaware of love! And in my breast I felt a deep stirring, which woke me as if from a dream. My heart filled the chamber of my bosom with its trembling palpitations; mightily surged my blood, its stream swollen by new emotions; stormily out of the warm night pressed the host of sighs,--increasing, in the wild tumult of joy, to the innumerableness of the sea. My breast, with what rapture it responds to the call which has wakened it to new life, and entones the lovely canticle of Love!"

He has hardly ceased, when Beckmesser thrusts apart the curtains.

"Have you finished? I have quite finished with the blackboard!" He holds up for inspection the blackboard, overscored on both sides with great chalk-marks. The masters break into laughter. "Have the goodness to listen," demands Walther imperiously; "I have only just reached the point where my song is to publish my lady's praise!"--"Go and sing wherever else you please. Here you have failed." Beckmesser descends from his post, flouris.h.i.+ng the blackboard.

"I beg you will examine, masters, this blackboard. Never since I live has such a thing been heard of. I should not have believed it though you had all affirmed it under oath...." Walther, in the innocence of his youth, loudly appeals: "Do you intend to allow him, masters, to interrupt me like this? Am I not from any one of you to have a hearing?" Pogner's courtesy interferes: "One word, friend Marker, are you not out of temper?" Beckmesser excitedly proceeds to justify his chalk-marks. No beginning or end, defective metre, defective construction! Blind meaning! Not one proper breathing-s.p.a.ce anywhere! No appropriate colouring--and of melody not a vestige! Then, what a mad medley of "modes"! A mixture of adventure-tone, blue-knightly-spurs tone, tall-pine-trees tone and haughty-stripling tone! (Which permits the supposition that David, though moved by the desire to amaze, was yet a faithful reporter of the refinements of master-singing.) The master-singers agree readily with Beckmesser, are really relieved to find their impressions boldly put into form for them by him. Not one of them has understood anything. Walther's unprecedented leaping to his feet in the heat of inspiration has given offence to this one; the other terms his singing "empty battering at the ear-drums."

They are about to subscribe unanimously to Beckmesser's verdict that he has lost his case, when Sachs's voice breaks in upon the confusion. He has listened to Walther in complete self-forgetful absorption. The absence of all jealousy in his large nature leaves his mind peculiarly open for genuine first-hand impressions; his wide understanding is not repelled by the new and strange. The close of the young man's song has found him won, enlisted, prepossessed.

He calls the masters to halt. "Not every one shares in your opinion!

The Knight's song struck me as novel, yet not confused; although he forsook the beaten track, he strode along with firm, unerring step...." Sachs nods to himself and beams at this reviewing of the intense pleasure he has just experienced. "When you find that you have been trying to measure by your own rules that which does not lie within the compa.s.s of your rules, the thing to do is to forget your rules and try to discover the rules of that which you wish to measure!" Which sage talk is not destined to be fruitfully heard in the agitation of prejudice, alarm, and dislike possessing the majority of the masters. "Oh, very well," fumes Beckmesser, "Now you have heard him: Sachs offering a loophole to bunglers, that they may slip in and out at will and flourish at ease. Sing to the people as much as you please, in marketplace and street; here no one shall gain admission save in accordance with rule!"

Sachs insists that Walther must be heard to the end. "The guild of the masters, the whole body," chafes Beckmesser, "are as nothing counterbalanced by Sachs!" "G.o.d forbid," speaks Sachs, "that I should desire anything contrary to the guild's laws; but among those very laws it stands written that the Marker shall be so chosen that neither love nor hate may influence his judgment. Now, if the Marker go on lover's feet, how should he not yield to the temptation of bringing a rival to derision before the a.s.sembled school?" Beckmesser flares up, trembling with rage. "What concern of Master Sachs's is it on what sort of feet I go? Let him sooner turn his attention to making me shoes that will not hurt my toes. But since my shoe-maker has become a mighty poet, it's a sorry business with my foot-wear.

See there, all down at the heel, the sole half off and shuffling!

His many verses and rhymes I would cheerfully dispense with, likewise his tales, his plays, and his comical pieces, if he would just bring me home my new shoes for to-morrow!" The thrust tells. Sachs scratches his ear a little ruefully, but is not found quite without a word to say. The excuse he advances is that while it is his custom to write a verse on the sole of every shoe he delivers, he has not yet found a verse worthy of the learned town-clerk. "But,"

by a turn of the conversation directing it to a use nearer his heart, "I very likely shall catch inspiration from the Knight,"

he says, "when I have heard the whole of his song! Wherefore let him sing further undisturbed. Sing!" Slyly smiling he makes sign to Walther, "Sing, in Master Marker's despite!"

Walther springs to the singing-chair, but the masters cry in a voice, "An end! An end!" Walther, undaunted, climbs to his feet upon the very seat of the sacred chair, from which he commands the a.s.sembly by half his height and haughtily looks down upon it.

And he sings with all his lungs and all his fire to make himself heard above the hubbub; he sings, determined to impose the impress of himself upon their minds, will they or not; and his tenor pierces through and floats over the snarling chorus of objection; and he sings his song, in spite of them all, to the very end. "From the dark thorn-hedge rustles forth the owl, and by his hooting rouses the hoa.r.s.e choir of the ravens; in night-black swarm they gather, and croak aloud with their hollow voices, magpies, crows, and daws!

But thereupon soars upward on a pair of golden wings, wonderful, a Bird: his clearly-s.h.i.+ning plumage gleams bright aloft in the air, rapturously he soars. .h.i.ther and thither, inviting me to join him in flight. My heart expands with a delicious pain, my longing to fly creates wings. I swing myself heavenward in daring flight, away from that death-vault, the city, away to the hills of home; thence to the green forest, meeting-place of birds, where long ago Walther, the Poet, won my allegiance. There sing I clear and loud the praise of my dearest lady, there mounts upward, little as Master Crows may relish it, the proud canticle of love!"

All this while the confusion of voices has not ceased or diminished.

Beckmesser has been heatedly, in support of his chalk-marks, going over Walther's literary misdemeanours: Defective versification, unp.r.o.nounceable words, misplaced rhymes, etc. etc. The masters have been vociferously criticising and rejecting the new-comer.

Pogner has looked on and taken no part, a dejected spectator. He is sorry to see the Knight defeated, and he says to himself that he knows he will regret his toleration of this high-handedness of the masters. For the natural thought has risen in his mind that it would be agreeable to have this fine fellow received in the guild, and subsequently into his family as son-in-law. Upon which thought naturally follows the other: "The victor whom I now must fall back upon, who knows if my child will care for him? I confess to a degree of uneasiness as to whether Eva will choose that master!"

Sachs alone has listened through all the manifold disturbance--has intently, delightedly listened; has loved the boy's courage, and marvelled at the force of his inspiration; has besought the masters to keep still and listen, or at least to let others listen.... "No use! It is labour lost! One can hardly hear his own words. The Knight can not from one of them gain attention!... That is what I call courage, to go on singing like that! His heart is in the right place,--a very giant of a poet. I, Hans Sachs, make verses and shoes, but he is a Knight and a poet on top of it!" The apprentices, emboldened by the general disorder, add their voices to the others, attempting to drown out the singer so fierily, unremittingly singing from his post of vantage. They join hands again and dance in circle around the Marker's platform.

Through all this, over all this, the stubborn song, not for a moment weakening or wavering, has climbed its way, with the figurative Bird, to its climax-point. His throat shall burst, but he will be heard! His last note Walther holds for four bars: "_Das stolze Lie----bes Lied!_"... Sung to an end it is, the lofty canticle of love. The singer jumps down from the chair. "A lasting farewell to you, my masters!" With a proud gesture, which rids him of them forever and consigns them to the dust-heap of their sordid narrowness and mediocrity, he stalks to the door. "_Versungen und verthan! Versungen und verthan!_" cry the masters, raising their hands according to custom in giving a vote; "_Versungen und verthan!_" He has failed in song, he is done with!

The song-trial is over. The apprentices in merry tumult take apart the Marker's closet, hurry off benches and seats, rapidly clearing the church of all signs of the meeting. The masters leave, except Sachs. He stands gazing abstractedly at the singing-chair, while a s.n.a.t.c.h of Walther's song sings itself over in his memory. His meditation is interrupted by the apprentices s.n.a.t.c.hing up and carrying off the chair. With a half-melancholy smile and a gesture of delicate mockery at himself for the spell he has so completely fallen under, reluctantly the last master-singer turns to the door, and the curtain falls.

II

The second act shows the exterior of Pogner's house and of Sachs's, his neighbour across the street. It is the close of day; David, putting up the shutters, is thinking of the morrow and its pleasures so intently that he does not, for a moment, recognise Lene's voice calling him. He mistakes it for that of some teasing fellow-apprentice, until he turns around and beholds her, as so often! with a promising-looking basket on her arm. "I bring you something good.

Yes, you may peep. That is for my precious treasure, but first, quick, tell me, what success had the Knight? Did you instruct him to some purpose? Was he made a master?"--"Ah, Mistress Lene, it's a bad case! He failed utterly and miserably!"--"He failed?..."

"Ay,--why should you so particularly care?" She jerks away the basket from his outstretched hand: "Keep your hands to yourself!

Here is nothing for you! G.o.d ha' mercy, our young lord defeated!"

and hurries into the house, leaving him crest-fallen, an object of mockery to his companions, who have lost nothing of the interview.

Goaded, he has finally plunged among them with punis.h.i.+ng fist, when Sachs's arrival upon the scene stops the disorder. The boys nimbly scatter. David is ordered indoors. "Close the shop and make a light. Put the new shoes on the lasts!" Both go in.

The peacefulness of evening is upon the scene. Pogner, with his daughter on his arm, returning from a walk, comes down the lane which divides his house from Sachs's. He hesitates at Sachs's door.

"Shall we see whether neighbour Sachs be at home? I should be glad of a talk with him. Shall I go in?..." But he decides against it.

"Why should I, after all? Better not! When a man undertakes a course out of the usual, how should he accept advice?... Was it not he who considered that I went too far? Yet, in forsaking the beaten track, was I not doing even as he does? Or, was I actuated peradventure--by vanity?" Pogner is not easy in his mind, it is plain. He invites his silent and preoccupied daughter to sit beside him a little s.p.a.ce on the stone seat under the linden in front of their house; he tries to fortify his faltering heart with the review of his plan for the morrow, held in the poetic light in which he first saw and found it alluring. "Deliciously mild is the evening. It presages a most beautiful day to s.h.i.+ne upon you to-morrow. Oh, child, does no throb of the heart tell you what happiness awaits you to-morrow, when the whole of Nuremberg, with its burghers and plebeians, its guilds, its populace and high officials, is to gather in your presence to see you award the prize, the n.o.ble laurel-wreath, to the master of your choice and your chosen bridegroom?" But he speaks to the Evchen of day before yesterday. So recently as that his scheme no doubt attracted the daughter of his blood even as it did him; she saw it with kindred eyes. Her youthful pride rejoiced in the part she was to play of lovely lady of romance, to know that she should become from that day a heroine of legend, her name for long years recurring in the songs of song-loving Nuremberg. As for the practical side of the question, she felt safe. She believed she knew which of the master-singers was sure of election by the majority of the masters, and him she had it in her heart to crown with a right good-will--so recently as day before yesterday. But to-day, at her father's "the master of your choice" she wistfully inquires, "Dear father, _must_ it be a master?"--"Understand me well, _a master of your choice_," the uneasy parent replies.

Magdalene is making signs from the doorway to Eva. The girl becomes absent-minded, drops the subject in question, and suggests to her father that he go in to supper. Vexed with himself and her, he rises from her side. "We are not expecting any guest, are we?"

he asks, a shade querulously. "Why, surely, the Knight?"--"How is that?"--"Did you not see him to-day?"--"No desire have I to see him!" the troubled father mutters. Then, in a flash, two and two leap together and make four to his startled mind. "What's this?...

Nay, thick-witted am I grown!"--"Dear little father, go in and change your coat!" urges the pretty daughter. "Humph!" he murmurs, now as absent-minded as she, "What is this buzzing in my head?"

and goes indoors.

Magdalene reports to Eva David's news: the Knight has been refused admission to the guild. "G.o.d help me! What shall I do!" cries Eva, in a sea of troubles; "Ah, Lene, the anxiety!... Where to turn to find out something?"--"From Sachs, perhaps?"--"Ah, yes, he is fond of me. Certainly, I will go to him."--"Beware of arousing suspicion. Your father will notice if we stay out any longer at present. Wait until after supper. I shall have something further to communicate to you then, a message which a certain person charged me with privately."--"Who?.. The Knight?"--"No, Beckmesser."--"Something proper that must be!" the fair girl scoffs as they enter the house.

Sachs, in working-clothes, is seen moving within his shop. He orders David to place his table and stool beside the door, and go to bed.

Reluctantly David goes off. He is troubled over Magdalene's unaccountable behaviour to him, and this sitting up late of his master's interferes with his slipping over to her for an explanation.

Sachs takes his seat before the work-table, sets his materials aright, but having done it, instead of falling to work, leans back and lets the sweetness of the evening beguile him, dreams possess and waft him whither they will. That haunting strain from Walther's song, repeated slowly, as by one savouring it with pensive pleasure, again sings itself to his inward ear; it, indeed, is partly to blame for his mood of gentle unrest. The memory will not let him alone of that marvellous, that unprecedented experience of the afternoon. Unreservedly the grey-haired man's homage flies to the youngling who so easily outstrips them all, with their inveterate painstaking, their mult.i.tudinous canons. Not only without a shade of bitterness but with a tender elation, he lives over again the emotions created in him by that pa.s.sionate song. To his true poet's heart it is a matter for exultation that just something beautiful should have been, and he there to witness and rejoice. He reconsiders it all with affectionate disquisition, fresh delight in every point.

If just a shade of sadness belongs to the hour, it lies in the recognition that though the vision of beauty has by the contagion that is proper to it stimulated in him the impulse to be at once producing, he too, beautiful things, not by any longing could he, after a life of faithful effort in the service of Poesy, produce anything to compare with the unprepared effusion of that youth!

In the serenity of the lovely evening his thoughts breathe themselves forth upon the scented June air: "What fragrance--how mild, how sweet, how abundant,--exhaled from the elder-tree! Its soft spell loosens my fibres, solicits me to seek expression for my thoughts.

To what purpose, any expression of mine? A poor, simple fellow am I! Little in the mood for work as I am, you had best, friend, let me alone! Far wiser I should attend to my leather and desist altogether from poetry!" Resolutely he falls to work. But Friend Elder-tree does not therefore cease to shed scent. It casts its spell over him again almost at once. "No, there is no use in trying to work!" Sachs leans back and listens again to the echo in his memory of Walther's song. "I feel it," he meditates, lending ear to the persistent voice in his brain, "and cannot understand it.

I cannot retain it--nor yet can forget it! And if for a moment I grasp it, to measure it is beyond me. But how should I hope to grasp that which struck me as illimitable? No rule fitted it, and yet it had not one fault! It sounded so old, and was yet so new,--like the song of birds in the sweet May-time. One who should hear it, and, smitten with madness, try to sing in imitation of that Bird, would meet with scorn and derision.... The law of Spring,--exquisite compulsion!--according to that were the rules of song laid in his breast. And he sang even as he must! And as he must, the power to do it came to him, I marked that quite particularly.... The Bird who sang to-day, his beak is fas.h.i.+oned aright! Great as was the dismay created by him among the masters, he was much to Hans Sachs's mind!"

Evchen has come out of her house and softly approached. Sachs looks up, joyfully surprised, at her greeting: "Good-evening, master; still so diligent?" There follows as pretty an exhibition of youthful feminine arts as one could wish to see. The cajoling inflections of the music alone would inform one of what is in action. Eva has come to Sachs with an ulterior motive: to hear the details of the song-trial. She has no mind, of course, to avow her interest frankly.

She must gain her end as she can, and, as a beginning, to flatter her man and challenge his fondness for her can never fall wholly wide of the mark. Sachs loves her dearly, that she knows, and she has, in the innocent presumption of her young beauty, not questioned that he would enter the song-tournament for her; and until yesterday she rested in placid contentment upon the intention of crowning this affection which never since her birth has failed her. Her narrow eighteen years have no conception of a devotion so generous and deep it would not dream, however fair the opportunity, of laying upon her youth the burden of his maturity, the oppression of his thoughtfulness.

Sachs is unwilling, too, very likely, in his wisdom, to compromise the peace of his Indian summer by a.s.suming the guardians.h.i.+p of an over-fair young wife. His neighbour's picturesque whim, the song-contest in prospect, has no doubt given Sachs sufficient uneasiness, but he finally, as we heard him declare to Pogner, rests satisfied with the maiden's privilege of refusal. Not one of the guild of master-singers seems to him worthy of this blooming young Eve. As for the father's "Never!" applied to her marriage if she shall not accept the master-singers' choice, Sachs knows his Pogner and his Eva, and is willing to entrust the matter to Time.

And so the ingenuous seductress finds the genial, clever, mellow neighbour's att.i.tude toward her in this scene more canny than she can have expected, or quite relishes. It almost appears he had no idea of trying for her. Perhaps an intuition of her momentary insincerity has made him more than naturally wary. The practising upon himself of her pretty coquetries he suffers however without unreasonable distaste. "Ha, child, dear Evchen, out so late? But I know--I know what brings you so late. The new shoes?"--"You are mistaken! I have not even tried on the shoes. They are so beautiful, so richly ornamented, I have not yet ventured so much as to put them on my feet!"--"And yet you are to wear them to-morrow as a bride?"

She takes a seat on the stone bench by his door and leans confidingly close to him. "Who, then, is to be the bridegroom?"--"How should I know?"--"How can you know then that I am to be a bride?"--"What a question! The town knows it!"--"And if the town knows it, friend Sachs feels that he has good authority. I should have thought that he knew more than the town."--"What should I know?"--"See, now, I shall be obliged to tell him! I am certainly a fool!..."--"I did not say so."--"It is you then who are more than common knowing...."--"I do not know."--"You do not know!.. You have nothing to say!..."

She draws away, nettled: "Ah, friend Sachs, I now perceive that pitch is not wax! I had supposed you cleverer." Calmly he takes up her words and by them guides the conversation from that ground.

"Child, the properties both of wax and pitch I am well acquainted with. With wax I stroke the silken threads with which I st.i.tch your dainty shoes; the shoes I am at this moment making, I sew with coa.r.s.e cord, and use pitch to stiffen it, for the hard-fibred customer who is to wear them."--"Who is it? Some one of great consequence, I suppose?"--"Of consequence, indeed! A proud master, on wooing bent, who has no doubt whatever of coming forth victorious from to-morrow's event. For Master Beckmesser I am making these shoes."--"Then use pitch in plenty, that he may stick fast in them and trouble me no more!"--"He hopes surely by his song to win you."--"What can justify such a hope?"--"He is a bachelor, you see; there are not many in the place." Again she draws near and bends close to him. "Might not a widower be successful?" In his kind, sane, unsentimental voice he replies promptly: "My child, he would be too old for you!"--"What do you mean, too old? The question here is one of art. The man who has achieved distinction in art, let him contend for me." Sachs smiles, indulgently, paternally.

"Dear little Eva, are you making a fool of me?" (_Machst mir blauen Dunst?_ Are you blinding me with blue haze?)--"Not I! It is you--"

she retorts warmly, "it is you who are playing tricks on me. Confess that you are of an inconstant nature. G.o.d knows who it is you have now housed in your heart. And I have been supposing for years it was I!"--"Because I used to be fond of carrying you in my arms?"--"I see! It was only because you had no children of your own!"--"Time was when I had a wife and children enough," Sachs reminds her gently.

"But your wife died, and I grew up!"--"And you grew up, tall and most fair!"--"And so I thought you would take me into your house in place of wife and child...."--"Thus I should have a child and a wife in one ... A pleasant pastime, indeed! Ha ha! How beautifully you have planned it all!"--"I believe," she pouts, and bends her brows on him in a puzzled frown, "I believe that the master is making fun of me! In the end he will calmly acquiesce in Beckmesser to-morrow carrying me off, right under his nose, from him and all the rest!"--"How could I prevent it," says Sachs, not upset apparently by the fearful thought, "if he is successful? Your father alone could find a remedy to that."--"Where such a master carries his head!" cries Eva, in acute exasperation, "If I were to come to your house, should I so much as be made at home?" Somewhat dryly he takes up her words, as before, to steer the conversation from these dubious borders; and by some hazard, or intuition, turns it upon the subject nearest her heart. "Ah, yes, you are right! My head is in a state of confusion. I have had much care and bother to-day. Something of it clings very probably to my wits."--"At the singing-school, do you mean?" she asks, with covert eagerness; "There was song-trial to-day."--"Yes, child, I had considerable trouble over an election." She draws close to him. "Now, Sachs!

You should have said so at once, and I would not have hara.s.sed you with senseless questions. Tell me now who it was that sought for election?"--"A knight, my child, wofully untaught!"--"A knight?

You do not say so! And was he admitted?"--"Far from it, my dear.

There was too much difference of opinion."--"Well, tell me, then.

Tell me how it all happened. If it troubles you, how should it leave me untroubled? So he stood the trial discreditably and was defeated...."--"Hopelessly defeated, the gallant cavalier!" Walther's failure is symbolised by a melodious groan. "Hopelessly, you say?

There was no way then by which he might have been saved? Did he sing so badly, so faultily, that there is no possibility more of his becoming a master?"--"My child," Sachs broadly a.s.severs, "for him all is definitely lost. And never in any land will he be made a master. For he who is a master born occupies ever among masters the very lowest place." On the verge of tears, with difficulty controlling her indignation, Eva continues her questioning: "One thing more tell me. Did he not find among the masters a single friend?" Sachs nearly laughs. "That were not bad! To be, on top of everything, his friend! His friend--before whom all feel themselves so small!..." (If Eva were not so engrossed with her single idea, the gleam in Sachs's eye, the fire in his tone, would interpret to her this brutal-sounding speech.) "Young Lord Arrogance, let him go his way! Let him go brawling and slas.h.i.+ng through the world!

As for us, let us draw our breath in peaceful enjoyment of what we have acquired with labour and difficulty. Keep off the fiery fellow from running amuck among us! Let fortune bloom for him elsewhere!" Trembling with anger, and dropping all concealment, Eva springs to her feet: "Yes, elsewhere shall fortune bloom for him than in the neighbourhood of you repulsive envy-ridden creatures!--elsewhere, where hearts still have some warmth in them, in spite of all cantankerous Master Hanses!--Directly, yes, I am coming!" (This to Magdalene, who has been calling to her from her father's door.) "I go home much comforted! It reeks of pitch here till G.o.d take pity on us! Kindle a fire with it, do, Master Sachs, and get a little warmth into you, if you can!"

"I thought so!" Sachs says to himself as he watches her cross the street to her own door. Two and two have leaped together in his mind, too. "The question is now what will be the sage course to pursue." He goes within and closes his door... all but a crack.

"Your father is asking for you," Magdalene reports to her agitated mistress. "Go to him," weeps Eva, "and say that I have gone to my room and to bed." But Beckmesser--the nurse reminds her of the message from him. He desires her to be at the window; he will sing and play to her a beautiful composition by which he hopes on the morrow to win her. He wishes to discover whether it be to her taste.

Eva, anxiously awaiting the arrival of her lover, disposes of the subject by ordering Magdalene to be at the window in her place.

"That would make David jealous!" reflects Magdalene; "His chamber is toward the lane." The prospect tickles her spirits. Even as she is urging Eva to go in, for her father, is calling, Walther comes down the lane. Hopeless after that, Magdalene recognises, to attempt dragging indoors the damsel. She hurries in by herself to content Pogner with some discreet misrepresentation.

With pa.s.sionate endearments Walther and Eva have rushed into each other's arms. All is lost which depended upon his winning the t.i.tle of master-singer. There is nothing further to hope from that quarter; no choice is left, they must fly together. "Away, where liberty is!" he cries, "That is where I belong, there where I am master in the house!" He grows hot with anger at remembrance of the masters'

treatment of him, but, even more, with loathing at the thought of his beloved sitting to-morrow in their midst, looked upon by them with covetous eyes as a possible bride. "And I would endure it, do you think? I would not fall upon them all, sword in hand?"

The night-watchman's horn breaks across his heated outburst. He claps hand to his sword. Eva draws him gently into the shadow of the linden-tree, to lie concealed until the watchman have pa.s.sed, and leaves him a moment to go within.

The night-watchman, with pike, horn, and lantern, comes down the lane, calling the hour of ten; he bids the householders look to their fires and lights, avoiding disaster, and so let G.o.d the Lord be praised! He turns the corner, the sound of his horn dies away.

Sachs from behind his door has played the eavesdropper. "Evil doings are under way! No less than an elopement! Attention! This must not be!"

Eva creeps forth from her father's house, disguised for the journey in Magdalene's things. "No stopping for reflection!" she cries; "Away from here! Away! Oh, that we were already off and afar!"--"This way, through the lane...." Walther draws her along with him. "At the city-gate we shall find servant and horses." But right across the lane falls suddenly a great shaft of light, projected from Sachs's window, cast by a lamp placed behind a gla.s.s globe which magnifies it to intense brilliancy. The lovers find themselves standing in a bright illumination. Eva pulls Walther quickly back into the dark. "Woe's me, the shoe-maker! If he were to see us!... Hide! Do not go near that man!"--"What other road can we take?"--"The street there--but it is a winding one, I am not well acquainted with it, and, besides, we should run into the night-watchman."--"Well, then, through the lane!"--"The shoe-maker must first leave the window!"--"I will force him to leave it!" says Walther, fiercely.--"He must not see you. He knows you."--"The shoe-maker?..."--"Yes, it is Sachs."--"Hans Sachs, my friend?"--"Do not believe it! He had nothing but evil to say of you!"--"What, Sachs? He, too?... I will put out his lamp!" She catches again at his arm, and even at that moment both are startled into immobility by the sound of a lute. Some one approaches, testing as he comes the strings of a lute, if they be in tune. The light has disappeared from the shoe-maker's window.