He was as young as twenty years allowed, and as old as it could make him. - Mervyn Peake

There he was. The infant Titus. His eyes were open but he was quite still. The puckered-up face of the newly-born child, old as the world, wise as the roots of trees. Sin was there and goodness, love, pity and horror, and even beauty for his eyes were pure violet. Earth’s passions, earth’s griefs, earth’s incongruous, ridiculous humours—dormant, yet visible in the wry pippin of a face.

His face wore the resigned expression of one who knew that the only difference between one day and the next lies in the pages of a calendar.

The ritual which his body had had to perform for fifty years had been no preparation for the unexpected.