“It was a lovely starlit night. They were on top of the Villejuif hill, when Paris appeared like a dark sea, and her millions of lights like phosphorescent waves; waves which were more clamorous, more passionate, more greedy than those of the tempestuous ocean; waves which are ever raging, foaming, and ever ready to devour what comes in their way.”

—Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, 1845; anonymous translation, Barnes and Noble Classics, 2004.