"What we must do, and what I must ask you to promise, may at first seem to you ridiculous," he said. "Yet your acceptance of my conditions is a matter of life or death, not to any one here present, but to another, whom we are about to visit. What I require is this: you are to put on, as we shall, the costumes in these valises, which are after the fashion of the early sixteenth century. Indeed, when our journey is resumed, there must be about us nothing to suggest the present age. Moreover, I must have your most earnest promise that when we reach our destination you will refrain from giving the least hint, by word or action, that the sixteenth century has passed away. If you feel unable to carry out this deception, we must leave you here. The slightest blunder would be fatal." No sooner had Antonio uttered these words than he turned in a panic to Leonello and Leonardo. "Am I wrong to have brought him?" he demanded, distractedly. "Can I depend on him at every point? You two, and Laura and Lina, know what it would mean if he should make a slip." Much disturbed, I declared that I wished for nothing better than to return to Florence at once. But Leonardo restrained me, while Leonello, patting Antonio's shoulder in reassurance, responded: "Trust him. You do his quick wit an injustice." Finally Antonio, with a heavy sigh, unlocked the valises. Hitherto I had associated masquerade with festive expectations, but nothing could have been less festive than the atmosphere in which we donned those costumes. They were rich, accurate, and complete. The wigs of flowing hair were perfectly deceptive. The fur-trimmed surcoats and the long hose were in fabrics suggestive of lost weaving arts. Each dagger, buckle, hat-gem, and finger-ring, was a true antique. Even when the two ladies appeared, in sumptuous Renaissance dresses, their coiffures as closely in accordance with that period as their expanded silhouettes, no smile crossed any face. "Are we all--" began Antonio. His voice failed him. Muffled in thick cloaks, we faced the blustery night again. Behind the farm-house stood horses, saddled and bridled in an obsolete manner. Our small cavalcade wound up a hillside path, which, in the darkness, the beasts felt out for themselves. One became aware of cypress-trees on either hillside, immensely tall, to judge by the thickness of their trunks. More and more numerous became these trees, as was evident from the lamentation of their countless branches. In its groan, the forest voiced to the utmost that melancholy which the imaginative mind associates with cypresses in Italy, where they seemed always to raise their funereal grace around the sites of vanished splendors. We were ascending one of the hills that lie scattered above Florence toward the mountains, and that were formerly all covered with these solemn trees.