'Come in, be ye who ye may!' the printer cried to the knockers at his door.
There entered the hugest masked man that they ever had seen. All in black he was, and horrifying and portentous he strode in. His sleeves and shoulders were ballooned after the German fashion, his sword clanked on the tiles. He was a vision of black, for his mask that appeared as big as another man's garment covered all his face, though they could see he had a grey beard when sitting down. He gazed at the fire askance.
He said—his voice was heavy and husky—
'Gruesset Gott,' and those of the citizens that had painfully attained to so much of that tongue answered him with—
'Lobet den Herr im Himmels Reich!'
He had with him one older man that wore a half-mask, and was trembling and clean-shaven, and one younger, that was English, to act as interpreter when it was needed. He was clean-shaven, too, and in the English habit he appeared thin and tenuous. They said he was a gentleman of the Archbishop's, and that his name was Lascelles.
He opened the meeting with saying that these great strangers were come from beyond the seas, and would hear answers to certain questions. He took a paper from his pouch and said that, in order that he might stick to the points that these strangers would know of, he had written down those questions on that paper.
'How say ye, masters?' he finished. 'Will ye give answers to these questions truly, and of your knowledge?'
'Aye will we,' the printer said, 'for to that end we are gathered here. Is it not so, my masters?'
And the assembly answered—