"'Much as at first the other masters marvelled at the haughty Heinrich's songs, and praised them, ere long they began to talk of spuriousness in the "manners," of emptiness and superficial display--nay, of absolute wickedness--in the works which he brought before them. Lady Mathilda, and she alone, had turned to the singer with her whole soul; and he praised her charms in a "manner" which all the other masters (except Wolfframb of Eschinbach, who reserved his opinion) declared to be heathenish and abominable. Before very long Lady Mathilda became a wholly altered creature. She looked down upon the other masters with scornful arrogance, and even withdrew her favour from Wolfframb of Eschinbach. She carried matters so far as to ask Heinrich of Ofterdingen to give her instruction in the craft of song, and began to write compositions herself quite in the style of his. From this time all beauty and attractiveness seemed to abandon this poor deluded lady. Discarding everything which serves to adorn noble ladies, and leaving off all womanly ways, she became an uncanny creature, neither woman nor man, detested by the women and laughed at by the men. The Landgrave, fearing that this disorder of hers might infect the other ladies of the Court, issued strict commands that no lady should occupy herself in composition under pain of banishment, and for this the men, who were much horrified at Mathilda's state, thanked him warmly. Countess Mathilda left the Wartburg, and repaired to a castle not far from Eisenach, whither Heinrich of Ofterdingen would have followed her had not the Landgrave ordered that he should go through with the contest to which the other masters had challenged him. "'"Heinrich of Ofterdingen," the Landgrave said to this overweening minstrel, "you have in ugly fashion broken up and disturbed, by those unholy songs of yours, the fair and happy circle which I had collected in this place. Me you could never beguile; I saw clearly, from the beginning, that your songs did not come out of the depths of a pure, honest singer's heart, but were the fruits of the teaching of some false master. What avails outward ornamentation, glitter, and brilliance, when what it covers is merely a lifeless corpse? You sing of lofty matters, of mysteries of the universe, it is true, not as they dawn in the hearts of men, as sweet presciences of a higher life, but as the presumptuous astrologer tries to comprehend them, and reduce and measure them with compass and scale. You should blush, Heinrich of Ofterdingen, to think at what you have arrived, that your brave, honest spirit has bent itself to serve an unworthy master."