showing itself—­we learn all about him and share his secret, too, in a very short while.  Then Magdalena calls Eva and tells her Beckmesser intends to serenade her, and goes in to take her place at the window; and then comes the only love-duet in the opera.  Walther appears; and Eva chants a melody that is surely first cousin to one of the greatest in Euryanthe.  As we get on we find it harder to give any adequate idea of the enchantment of the thing.  The gentle evening wind makes its voice heard, low, soft; and Walther, scorning the masters who compose and sing only by rule—­and, by the way, what would Wagner have done in the days when a musician had to play and sing before he could be understood or ever heard as a composer?—­works himself up to a state of tumultuous indignation; then a strange noise is heard in the distance, the watchman’s cow-horn.  A minute’s silence, and next one of the sweetest melodies in all music—­expressive of the love of Walther and Eva, but also full of that feeling for the remote past; then the entrance of the watchman, with his warning to the folk to look after their lights and fires:  it is ten o’clock (late hours) in our city, and disaster must be kept off at all costs.  Sachs has heard the talk between Eva and Walther and determined to ward off disaster in one shape at any rate:  he places a light so that they cannot get away without being seen; they are furious, desperate, but that loveliest of melodies flows on until Beckmesser comes in to perform his serenade.  From this point Wagner, without ever ceasing to be the consummate artist or allowing the old-world atmosphere to weaken its hold on our senses, lets himself go like a schoolboy out for a holiday.  He begins his splendid song, a parable:  Eve was well enough off in the Garden of Eden, but when she took a wrong step the Lord sent a shoemaker to save her.  The words are in the very spirit of the Middle Ages:  a materialistic, naive, literal handling of spiritual things; but the most devout of believers can find no cause of offence.  The song opens, as I have mentioned, in the rhythm (4-4 instead of 3-4) of the Sword scene, the harmonies being practically the same.  The tune is one of Wagner’s finest:  indeed, if we did not know what he could do, if we could not hear the opera once in a while, we should refuse to believe that such dignity and beauty of utterance could be kept up alongside of the grave old cobbler’s humorous bedevilment.  Beckmesser wants to serenade Eva—­mistaking Magdalena at the window in Eva’s dress for that lady; Sachs insists on finishing Beckmesser’s new shoes for the contest of the morrow, and revenges himself for the insult inflicted upon Walther in the morning by striking one blow for every mistake.  Before this is arranged there is a long altercation, and as the heat of the men’s temper dies down that sweet love melody of the old world creeps in again; but then the farce commences.  Beckmesser’s song is almost outrageous caricature;