BOOK ONE

 TO THE BOATS

The likeness passed away, say, like a breath along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which, a hospital procession of negro cupids, several headless and all cripples, were offering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender …

—Charles Dickens,

A Tale of Two Cities

TROILUS: Fear me not, my lord;

I will not be myself, nor have cognition

Of what I feel.

—William Shakespeare,

Troilus and Cressida