ot in her heart for David. The boyish shoe-maker's
apprentice on his side adores her--and the pleasant bits she maternally
smuggles to him from Pogner's kitchen. Questioned, he informs her
that he is making the place ready for the master-singers. There is
to be directly a song-trial: such song-apprentices as commit no
offence against the table of rules are to be promoted to mastership.
Here would be the Knight's chance, reflects Lene,--his one chance
to be made master before the fateful morrow. When, as they are
leaving, Walther offers the ladies his company to Master Pognet's,
she bids him wait rather for Pogner where he stands: if he wishes
to enter the contest for Evchen's hand, Fortune has favoured him
with respect to time and place. "What am I to do?" asks the lover
eagerly. David shall instruct him, and Magdalene herself instructs
David to make himself useful to the Knight. "Something choice from
the kitchen I will save for you. And if the young lord here shall
to-day be made a master, you may to-morrow proffer your requests
full boldly!"

"Shall I see you again?" Eva shyly asks of Walther, as Magdalene is
hurrying her off. His answer gives the keynote of him, characteristic
outburst that it is of his vital, vigourous, enthusiastic youth,
to which all things seem possible--beautiful youth, which has the
splendour and force of fire, with the freshness of flowers; which
flashes like a sword and trembles like a lute-string. "Shall I
see you again?" It is after vespers. "This evening, surely!" he
replies: "How shall I tell you what I would be willing to undertake
for your sake? New is my heart, new is my mind, new to me is all
this which I am entering upon. One thing only I know, one thing
only I grasp, that I will devote soul and senses to winning you!
If it may not be with the sword, I must achieve it with song, and
as a master sing you mine! For you, my blood and my possessions,
for you, the sacred aspiration of a poet!" Strains from this sweet
and proud profession are scattered all through the story, they
are the Walther-motifs, heard in his first sigh as he watches her
from the shadow of the church-pillar, and woven finally into his
prize-song. And the effect of youth that goes magically with them!
The fragrance that belongs to them, with the fire! As of green
things in early May, wet with the dew of dawn,--the beams of the
rising sun kindling all to a softly-dazzling glory. The hearer
feels himself young too w