, quickly home, to learn the thing by heart. Hans
Sachs, my dear fellow, I have misunderstood you. My judgment was
thrown off the track by that adventurer. Just such a one was needed!
But we masters made short work of him! Good-bye! I must be off!
Elsewhere will I show my gratitude for your sweet friendliness. I
will vote for you hereafter, I will buy your works. I will make
you Marker!" Effusively he embraces him: "Marker, Marker, Marker
Hans Sachs!"

Hans Sachs looks after the departing figure with a meditative smile.
"So entirely ill-natured have I never yet found any one. He cannot
fail to come to grief of some sort. Many there be who squander
their wits, but they reserve enough to keep house with. The hour
of weakness comes for each one of us, when he turns fool and is
open to parley." So entirely ill-natured Beckmesser has been found
that Sachs feels no compunction at letting him run into the pitfall
gaping ahead. He is willing to win an advantage by a deception,
let him follow his head, why should honest Sachs be tender of him?
The joke is not severe beyond his deserts. He has candidly rejoiced
that short work was made of that adventurer, Von Stolzing; why
should he not be permitted to encounter the same sort of treatment?
Why indeed should not his dishonesty be turned to use? "That Master
Beckmesser here turned thief," reflects Sachs, "falls in excellently
with my plan."

Eva appears in the doorway, Eva dazzling in her white wedding-dress.
"I was wondering," says Sachs to himself at sight of her, "where
she could be!" For, as Walther was known to be in the house, it
was thought she must before long find some pretext to stand beneath
the same roof. She wears a little languid air; last evening was a
sore trial to young nerves. A tinge of accusing plaintiveness is in
her voice. She is markedly abstracted; her thoughts are wandering,
of course, all about the house in search of _him_. She has her
pretext ready, and meets Sachs's warm compliment upon her appearance
with a reproachful: "Ah, master! So long as the tailor has done
his work successfully, who ever will divine where I suffer
inconvenience, where secretly my shoe pinches me?"--"The wicked
shoe!" Sachs is for a moment really deceived; "It was your humour
yesterday not to try it on."--"You see? I had too much confidence.
I was mistaken in the master."--"I am sorry, indeed I am!" He is
on his knee at once: "Let me look at it, my child, that I may help
you,