By now it was afternoon. Ted began to walk, still dazed, until he found himself among a skein of backstreets so narrow they felt dark. He passed churches blistered with grime, moldering palazzi whose squalid interiors leaked sounds of wailing cats and children. Soiled, forgotten coats of arms were carved above their massive doorways, and these unsettled Ted: such universal, defining symbols made meaningless by nothing more than time.” (p. 212)