circumstance of an entire personal resemblance between the two
heroes, through which they pass for each other again and again,
and thereby into many strange adventures; that curious interest of
the Doppelganger, which begins among the stars with the
Dioscuri, being entwined in and out through all the incidents of
the story, like an outward token of the inward similitude of their
souls. With this, again, is connected, like a second reflection of
that inward similitude, the conceit of two marvellously beautiful
cups, also exactly like each other--children's cups, of wood, but
adorned with gold and precious stones. These two cups, which
by their resemblance help to bring the friends together at critical
moments, were given to them by the Pope, when he baptized
them at Rome, whither the parents had taken them for that
purpose, in gratitude for their birth. They cross and recross very
strangely in the narrative, serving the two heroes almost like
living things, and with that well-known effect of a beautiful
object, kept constantly before the eye in a story or poem, of
keeping sensation well awake, and giving a certain air of
refinement to all the scenes into which it enters. That sense of
fate, which [10] hangs so much of the shaping of human life on
trivial objects, like Othello's strawberry handkerchief, is thereby
heightened, while witness is borne to the enjoyment of beautiful
handiwork by primitive people, their simple wonder at it, so that
they give it an oddly significant place among the factors of a
human history.

Amis and Amile, then, are true to their comradeship through all
trials; and in the end it comes to pass that at a moment of great
need Amis takes the place of Amile in a tournament for life or
death. "After this it happened that a leprosy fell upon Amis, so