er moaned, trying to peep again at the song
which he had not been able to learn. He desperately ascended the mound
which was reserved for the singers, escorted by an apprentice. He
stumbled and nearly fell, so excited was he, and so frightened at his
plight, for he did not know the song, and he had none of his own.
Altogether he was in a bad way--but he was yet to be in a worse!

"Come and make this mound more firm," he snarled, nearly falling down.
At that everybody laughed. Finally he placed himself, and all waited
for him to begin. This is how he sang the words of the first stanza:

Bathing in sunlight at dawning of the day,
With bosom bare,
To greet the air;
My beauty steaming,
Faster dreaming,
A garden roundelay wearied my way.

Only compare this with the words of the song as Walther sang them! The
music matched the words for absurdity.

"Good gracious! He's lost his senses," one Mastersinger said to
another. Beckmesser, realizing that he was not getting the song right,
became more and more confused. He felt the amazement of the people,
and that made him desperate. At last, half crazed with rage and shame,
he pulled the song from his pocket and peeped at it. Then he tried
again, but turned giddy, and at last tottered down from the mound,
while people began to jeer at him. Hans Sachs might have been sorry
for the wretch, had he not known how dishonest he had been, willing to
use another's song that he might gain the prize.

Beckmesser rushed furiously toward Sachs and shook his fist at him:

"Oh, ye accursed cobbler! Ye have ruined me," he screamed, and rushing
madly away he lost himself in the crowd. In his rage, he had screamed
that the song was Sachs's, but nobody would believe him, because, as
Beckmesser had sung it, it had sounded so absurd.

Sachs took the manuscript quietly up, after Beckmesser had thrown it
down.

"The song is not mine," he declared. "But I vow it is a most lovely
song, and that it has been sung wrong. I have been accused of making
this, and now I deny it. I beg of the one who wrote it to come forth
now and sing it as it should be sung. It is the song of a great
master, believe me, friends and Mastersingers. Poet, come forth, I
pray you," he called, and then Walther stepped to the mound, modestly.
Every one beheld him with pleasure. He was indeed a fine and
gallant-looking fellow.

"Now, Masters, hold the song; and since I swear that I did not write