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The masters declare him outsung and rejected, but Hans Sachs befriends him, and demands he shall have a chance for the prize. The second act discloses Pogner's house and Sachs's shop. The apprentices are busy putting up the shutters, and are singing as they work. Walter meets Eva and plots an elopement with her, but Sachs prevents them from carrying out their rash plan.
But Eva, who has stood breathlessly gazing and listening to the thrilling accents, new to her, of her lover, when the heart-searching voice is silent and the tension relaxes, bursts into passionate weeping, sinks on Sachs's breast and clings to him, sobbing.
Sachs's peculiar audacity has lain in his taking the risk of a perfectly justified revolt on the part of the masters against his high-handed proceeding; he has counted on the restraining effect of the public occasion; has counted on luck, which proverbially follows the bold.
"I'm Seven Sachs's manager." It was as if he owned and operated Mr. Seven Sachs. "So I heard," said Edward Henry, and then remarked with mischievous cordiality, "and I suppose these chaps told you I was the sort of man you were after. And you got them to ask me in, eh, Mr. Bryany?" Mr. Bryany gave an uneasy laugh, but seemed to find naught to say. "Well, what is your little affair?"
Fully returned at length to a sense of the common surrounding world, Sachs asks David for his day's lesson, and the apprentice briskly sings his verse, first comically confusing the tune with that of Beckmesser's serenade, still buzzing in his head, then, at Sachs's gesture of astonishment, righting himself and acquitting himself of his task without slip.
"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.
To show how every one knows and loves his songs, the people entone one of them all together and sing it jubilantly through; and "Long live Sachs!" they shout, "Hans Sachs! Long live Nuremberg's beloved Hans Sachs!" It is too much for poet to experience unmoved, and Sachs's voice, when the people quiet down at last, to listen, only gradually regains its manly firmness.
He stops short in the doorway, spell-bound equally at sight of her in her shimmering bride's-robe of white, and from their eyes, fixed unwaveringly upon each other, their hearts travel forth on luminous beams to meet and mingle. Sachs's back is toward Walther; he has not see him, but the tell-tale light on Eva's face, reflection of a sun-burst, has reported to him of the apparition.
He gave calm orders to his chauffeur. Four empty taxis passed down the sunny magnificence of Fifth Avenue and ignored Mr. Sachs's urgent waving. The fifth stopped. The baggage was strapped and tied to it: which process occupied much time. Edward Henry, fuming against delay, gazed around. A nonchalant policeman on a superb horse occupied the middle of the road.
Sachs stood continually between the travellers and the administrative rigour and official incredulity of a proud republic. And in the minimum of time the fine trunk of Edward Henry and the modest packages of the poet were on the roof of Mr. Sachs's vast car.
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