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! God 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 punishing 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 space 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 shine 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 noble 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. "God 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 multitudinous canons. Not only without a shade of bitterness but with a tender elation, he lives over again the emotions created in him by that passionate 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 fashioned 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 assuming the guardianship 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 attitude 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 stitch your dainty shoes; the shoes I am at this moment making, I sew with coarse 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. God 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 harassed 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 assevers, "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 slashing 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 God 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 passionate endearments Walther and Eva have rushed into each other's arms. All is lost which depended upon his winning the title 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 passed, 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 God 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 glass 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. Walther is again for dashing down the lane toward the city-gate and the horses. "But no! Can't you hear?"—his lady hangs back. "Some one else has come and taken up his station there."—"I hear it and see it. It is some street-musician. What is he doing so late at night?"—"It is Beckmesser!"—"What, the Marker? The Marker in my power? There is one whose loafing in the street shall not trouble us long...." Again she catches in terror at his arm, so ready ever to catch at the sword. "For the love of Heaven, listen! Do you wish to waken my father? The man will sing his song and then will go his way. Let us hide behind the shrubs yonder." She draws her lover to the stone seat under the linden-tree.
Sachs at the sound of the lute has drawn in his light, become superfluous, since the road is effectually blocked for the lovers by the musical interloper. He overhears Eva's exclamation, "Beckmesser!" and has an idea. Beckmesser shall be made of use to prevent the lovers as long as possible from moving any farther from the safe parental roof than that stone seat under the linden, where they huddle close, whispering together, while keeping a watchful eye on the actors of the comedy which follows. Sachs, as one might know of him, loves a joke. He softly opens his door, places his work-bench and lamp right in the doorway, and sets himself at his work. When Beckmesser, after impatiently preluding to bring to the window the figure he is expecting, clears his throat to begin the serenade, Sachs, vigourously hammering on his last, prevents him by bursting forth on his own account in a lusty ditty with much loud Ohe, Ohe, Trallalei!—a playful ditty, sweet at the core, about Eve, the original mother, and the first pair of shoes, ordered for her from an angel by the Lord himself, who was sorry to see the pitiful sinner, when turned out of Paradise, go bruising her little feet, for which He had a tenderness, on the hard stones; and Adam, too, stubbing his toes against the flints, the song tells how he on the same occasion was measured for boots. Beckmesser can hardly contain his impatience and disgust till the first verse comes to an end. Upon the last note of it, he addresses the shoe-maker with what sickly civility he can summon: "How is this, master? Still up? So late at night?" Sachs expresses an equal surprise to find the town-clerk moving abroad: "I suppose you are concerned for your shoes. I am at work on them, as you see; you shall have them to-morrow."—"Devil take the shoes!" groans Beckmesser; "What I want here is quiet!" But his words are lost amid Sachs's hammer-blows and unmoderated voice launching forth upon the second verse. "You are to stop at once!" Beckmesser, in mounting anger, orders Sachs, as, hardly pausing to take breath, the shoe-maker is attacking the third verse. "Is it a practical joke you are playing on me? Do you make no distinction between the night and the day?" Sachs looks at him in innocent surprise. "What does it matter to you that I should sing? You are anxious, are you not, to have your shoes finished?"—"Shut yourself up indoors then and keep quiet!"—"Nay, night-labour is burdensome; if I am to keep cheerful at my work, I must have air and light-hearted song. So hear how the third verse goes!" And he attacks it with a will. There is added to Beckmesser's other troubles the fearful thought that the maiden may mistake this outrageous bellowing for his love-song. A second-story window in Pogner's house has softly opened, a form is dimly outlined within the frame of it. "I am lost now," Beckmesser desperately reflects, "if he goes on singing!" He resolutely steps up to Sachs: "Friend Sachs, just listen to one word! How bent you seem upon those shoes! I truly had forgotten all about them. As a shoe-maker, the fact is, I hold you in great esteem, but as an artist and critic I honour you even more highly. I beseech you therefore to give your attention to a little song by which I hope to-morrow to win the prize. I am eager to be told whether you think well of it." While talking, he strums, as if casually, upon his lute, to keep the lady from leaving the window. "Oh, no!" Sachs replies; "You wish to catch me by my weak side. I have no wish for another berating. Since your shoe-maker takes himself for a poet, it fares but ill with your footgear. I can see for myself that it is in a deplorable condition. And so I drop verse and rhyme, knowledge and erudition, and I make you the new shoes for to-morrow."—"Let that be, do!" Beckmesser adjures him; "That was only a joke. Understand now what my true sentiments are. You stand high in honour with the people, and the daughter of Pogner has a great opinion of you. Now, if I intend to offer myself as a suitor for her to-morrow, can you not see how I might be destroyed by her not taking kindly to my song? Therefore listen to me quietly, do, and when I have finished my song tell me what in it you like, and what not, that I may make my dispositions accordingly."—"Go along! Let me alone!" Sachs still excuses himself; "How should so much honour accrue to me? My songs are but common street-songs; let me therefore, in my common way, sing them to the street!" He is taking up his noisy lay again about Eve and shoes when Beckmesser's rage explodes. Quaking, the town-clerk pours forth reproach and insult. This conduct of the shoe-maker's has its source in envy, nothing else; envy of the dignity of Marker which has never been bestowed upon him, and which now never will be, not so long as Beckmesser lives and has influence with the masters. When he stops at last, for lack of breath, Sachs asks artlessly: "Was that your song?... Somewhat irregular in form, but it sounded right spirited!"
Walther, in the shadow, clasping his troubled lady, who is unaccountably saddened by the untimely farce, struggles with a hysterical desire to laugh—it is all so like a fantastic dream.
At last shoe-maker and town-clerk come to an arrangement. Beckmesser shall sing his song, and Sachs, whose criticism he so unwontedly desires, shall act as Marker; but Sachs, who contends that he is loath to stop work on his shoes, instead of marking with chalk, shall mark the singer's mistakes by blows of his hammer on the last, and so, peradventure, while listening, forward his work. A disgusting arrangement, but Beckmesser is in such terror lest the lady leave her post before he have sung that he consents. "Begin!" hollaes Sachs, and Beckmesser, after preluding, sings, while Sachs punctuates the lines with smart taps on the last. These at first discompose the singer, and he stops at each tap to inquire angrily what it is that is not right; he shortly resolves, however, to pay no heed to the spiteful enemy, but cover over the interruptions with his voice. Louder and louder and ever more breathlessly he sings, a lyric that is more prosy than prose, a piece of common statement of facts, tortured into verse, which attains metre only by throwing the accent continually, ludicrously, on the wrong syllables. The melody, nasal and snuffling, is the very prose, too, of music. A ridiculous, dead-in-earnest song, relating in three long verses the circumstances of the song-contest and the singer's tender hopes.
By the end of the second verse, the teasing shoe-maker has tapped so much that the soles are solid with the vamps. He swings the finished shoes triumphantly before his customer, announcing that he has thought of an appropriate verse to write on the soles, and it is: "A good song must keep time!" But Beckmesser does not stop for him. Beckmesser disdainfully goes on, as if he and the lady were alone in the world, and he sang thus loud to overpower some such thing as the sea-surf. In his engrossment he fails to take account of various ominous signs. He does not see David appear at his chamber-window. In spite of Eva's clothes which she is wearing, the boy recognises Magdalene at the casement across the way. His jealousy is quick to suppose her cold treatment of himself due to an inclination toward this new admirer. The neighbours, too, begin to lean out of their windows and ask the reason of this abominable caterwauling. A crowd collects in the street, of persons trying to find out what is the matter. The apprentices come flocking, mischievous instigators to mischief, and the journeymen, little better than they. Soon, there is difference and quarreling among those arriving to inquire the cause of the disturbance. Neighbours pour into the street, men and women in night-attire; finally, the heavy burghers arrive, the masters themselves, noisy, almost disorderly, in their attempts to restore order. Beckmesser, singing at the top of his lungs, does not wake to consciousness of his surroundings until a cudgel falls across his back, wielded by David. He flees—but is at every few steps overtaken again and beaten. The two figures, in flight and pursuit, waving lute and brandishing cudgel, disappear and reappear at intervals among the swaying crowd. In vain Magdalene from above screams to David to let the gentleman go. Pogner's hand draws her away from the window; in the dim light he mistakes her for Eva. Sachs, when the confusion is well under way, draws in his work-bench and closes his door ... again all but a crack, through which he can watch the two figures wrapped in a single cloak beneath the linden-tree. When the disorder is at its height, Walther clasps the girl with his left arm, with his right bares his sword, and attempts a rush through the crowd, toward the gates and horses of freedom. Quick as thought, Sachs has cleared his way to the couple; he grasps Walther by the arm. Pogner at the same moment appears at his door, calling for Lene. Sachs pushes toward him Eva, half-fainting, bereft by panic of all power to withstand the impulsion. Pogner receives her in his arms and draws her within doors, not suspecting but that she is the faithful nurse whose garments she wears. With deft foot Sachs propels David before him into the house; then, forcibly drawing Walther with him across the threshold, fastens the door,—his object happily accomplished.
The street-battle is still raging. But at this point women pour water from the windows on the heads of the combatants, as they would on fighting dogs. Simultaneously, the horn of the night-watchman is heard. In the space of a yawn the scene is deserted; all down the street are fast-closed windows and doors; Beckmesser hobbles off rubbing his back. The old night-watchman, reaching the spot, rubs his eyes, clearly wondering if he have dreamed that he heard alarming sounds from that quarter. After looking all around, he droningly calls the hour of eleven, enjoins the people to be on guard against phantoms and spooks, that no evil spirit may work harm to their souls, and so let God the Lord be praised! The full moon rising above the housetops suddenly floods the quiet lane. The watchman slowly goes down it. As he vanishes around the corner, the curtain falls.