"Friends, since I am beloved of thee, I have one favour to ask. The prize this day is to be a unique one, and I ask that the contest be open. It is no more than fair, since so much is to be won. I ask that no one who shall ask for a chance to sing for this fair prize be denied. Shall this be so?" While he waited for an answer, every one was in commotion. "Say, Marker," he asked of Beckmesser, "is this not as it should be?" That rascal was wiping his face from which the sweat was streaming and trying in despair to conquer the knight's song. "You know you need not sing that song unless you wish," Hans reminded him, aside. "My own is abandoned, and now it is too late for me to make another," Beckmesser moaned; "but with you out of the contest--well, I shall surely win with anything. You must not desert me now." "Well, let it be agreed," Hans cried aloud, "that the contest shall be open to all; so now begin." "The oldest first," Kothner cried, thus calling attention to the age of Beckmesser. "Begin, Beckmesser," another shouted. "Oh, the devil," Beckmesser 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.