We stepped into a limousine, which whirled us away through the twilight. The weather made one remember that even in Florence the merging of March and April could be violent. To-night masses of harsh-looking clouds sped across the sky before an icy wind from the mountains. A burial-party, assembled at a convent gate, had their black robes fluttering, their waxen torches blown out. "Death!" muttered Antonio, with a sardonic grimace. "And they call it unconquerable!" As we paused before a dwelling-house, two men emerged upon the pavement. They were Leonello, the artist, and another friend of the old days, named Leonardo. The unusual occasion constrained our greetings. The newcomers, after pressing my hand, devoted themselves with grave solicitude to Antonio. He burst forth at them like a man whose nervous tension is nearly unendurable: "Yes, hang it all! I am quite well. Why the devil will you persist in coddling me?" Leonello and Leonardo gave me a mournful look. We now stopped at another door, where there joined us two ladies unknown to me. Both were comely, with delicate features full of sensibility. Neither, I judged, had reached the age of thirty. In the moment of meeting--a moment notable for a stammering of incoherent phrases, a darting of sidelong looks at Antonio, a general effect of furtiveness and excitement--no one remembered to present me to these ladies. However, while we were arranging ourselves in the limousine I gathered that the name of one of them was Laura, and that the other's name was Lina. In their faces, on which the street-lights cast intermittent flashes, I seemed to discern a struggle between apprehension and avidity for this adventure. The silence, and the tension of all forms, continued even when we left the city behind us and found ourselves speeding northward along a country road. "Northward. To the Castle of Manzecca, then?" I asked myself. The rays from our lamps revealed the trees all bending toward the south. The wind pressed against our car, as if to hold us back from the revelation awaiting us ahead, in the midst of the black night, whence this interminable whistling moan pervaded nature. Rain dashed against the glass. Through the blurred windows the lights of farms appeared, to be instantly engulfed by darkness. Then everything vanished except the illuminated streak of road. We seemed to be fleeing from the known world, across a span of radiance that trembled over an immeasurable void, into the supernatural. The limousine glided to a standstill. "Here we abandon the car." We entered the kitchen of a humble farm-house. Strings of garlic hung from the ceiling, and on the floor lay some valises. As the ladies departed into another room, Antonio mastered his emotion and addressed me.