Time: 　1 A.M., Thursday, June 17, 1904 Scene: the cabman's shelter under the Loop Line bridge, just west of the Custom House, near Butt Bridge, (in 1904) the easternmost bridge over the Liffey. These coffee- house shelters were relatively small eight-sided build- ings, approximately ten feet by fifteen feet. Organ:　nerves Art:　navigation Colors:　none Symbol: sailors Technique: narrative (old) Correspondences: Eumaeus--Skin-the-Goat [i.e., James Fitzharris; see 7.640n]; Ulysses, Pseudangelos--the Sailor; Melan- thious [Odysseus's goatherd] --Corley Background: In the course of Book 13 of The Odyssey Odysseus returns alone to Ithaca. He is in serious danger of suf- fering Agamemnon's fate (i.e., of being murdered on ar- rival) if he enters his house and announces his identity. He has a long consultation with Athena in which he gets news of his beleaguered house and of his son Tel- emachus's enterprise in searching for news of him on the mainland.Athena disguises Odysseus as an old man and counsels him to seek the dwelling of the swineherd Eumaeus, who "Of all Odysseus' field hands . . . cared most for the estate." In Book 14 Eumaeus receives the incognito Odysseus with a ready offer of hospitality and with sensible kindness and honesty. Book 15 is div- ided between a description of how Telemachus avoids the ambush the suitors have set for him as he returns to Ithaca and the development of the relationship be- tween Odysseus and Eumaeus. In Book 16 Telemachus comes to Eumaeus's but in search of news of his moth- er; Odysseus tests Telemachus's filial commitment and then reveals himself. Reunited, father and son plan an approach to their besieged house.

Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed off the greater bulk
of the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him
up generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he very badly needed.
His (Stephen's) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but
a bit unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink
Mr Bloom in view of the hour it was and there being no pump of Vartry
water available for their ablutions let alone drinking purposes hit u-
pon an expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the cab-
man's shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt
bridge where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk
and soda or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce he
was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him
to take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means
during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was ra-
ther pale in the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to
get a conveyance of some description which would answer in their then con-
dition, both of them being e.d.ed, particularly Stephen, always assuming
that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly after a few such pre-
liminaries as brushing, in spite of his having forgotten to take up his
rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service in the sha-
ving line, they both walked together along Beaver street or, more properly,
lane as far as the farrier's and the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the li-
very stables at the corner of Montgomery street where they made tracks to
the left from thence debouching into Amiens street round by the corner of
Dan Bergin's. But as he confidently anticipated there was not a sign of a
Jehu plying for hire anywhere to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably en
gaged by some fellows inside on the spree, outside the North Star hotel and
there was no symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who
was anything but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by emitt-
ing a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched over his head, twice.

This was a quandary but, bringing common sense to bear on it, evidently
there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot
it which they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullett's and the
Signal House which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the
direction of Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Bloom being handicapped
by the circumstance that one of the back buttons of his trousers had, to
vary the timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons though, entering
thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made light of the
mischance. So as neither of them were particularly pressed for time, as it
happened, and the temperature refreshing since it cleared up after the re-
cent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius, they dandered along past by where the
empty vehicle was waiting without a fare or a jarvey. As it so happened a
Dublin United Tramways Company's sandstrewer happened to be returning and
the elder man recounted to his companion a propos of the incident his own
truly miraculous escape of some little while back. They passed the main
entrance of the Great Northern railway station, the starting point for
Belfast, where of course all traffic was suspended at that late hour and
passing the backdoor of the morgue (a not very enticing locality, not to
say gruesome to a degree, more especially at night) ultimately gained the
Dock Tavern and in due course turned into Store street, famous for its C
division police station. Between this point and the high at present unlit
warehouses of Beresford place Stephen thought to think of Ibsen, associa-
ted with Baird's the stonecutter's in his mind somehow in Talbot place,
first turning on the right, while the other who was acting as his fidus
achates inhaled with internal satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's ci-
ty bakery, situated quite close to where they were, the very palatable o-
dour indeed of our daily bread, of all commodities of the public the pri-
mary and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread, O
tell me where is fancy bread, at Rourke's the baker's it is said.

En route to his taciturn and, not to put too fine a point on it, not yet
perfectly sober companion Mr Bloom who at all events was in complete pos-
session of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober, spoke
a word of caution re the dangers of nighttown, women of ill fame and swell
mobsmen, which, barely permissible once in a while though not as a habitual
practice, was of the nature of a regular deathtrap for young fellows of his
age particularly if they had acquired drinking habits under the influence
of liquor unless you knew a little jiujitsu for every contingency as even
a fellow on the broad of his back could administer a nasty kick if you
didn't look out. Highly providential was the appearance on the scene of
Corny Kelleher when Stephen was blissfully unconscious but for that man
in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour the finis might have been that
he might have been a candidate for the accident ward or, failing that, the
bridewell and an appearance in the court next day before Mr Tobias or, he
being the solicitor rather, old Wall, he meant to say, or Mahony which sim-
ply spelt ruin for a chap when it got bruited about. The reason he mention-
ed the fact was that a lot of those policemen, whom he cordially disliked,
were admittedly unscrupulous in the service of the Crown and, as Mr Bloom
put it, recalling a case or two in the A division in Clanbrassil street,
prepared to swear a hole through a ten gallon pot. Never on the spot when
wanted but in quiet parts of the city, Pembroke road for example, the gua-
rdians of the law were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they were
paid to protect the upper classes. Another thing he commented on was equip-
ping soldiers with firearms or sidearms of any description liable to go
off at any time which was tantamount to inciting them against civilians
should by any chance they fall out over anything. You frittered away your
time, he very sensibly maintained, and health and also character besides
which, the squandermania of the thing, fast women of the Demimonde ran
away with a lot of (pounds).s.d. into the bargain and the greatest danger of
all was who you got drunk with though, touching the much vexed question
of stimulants, he relished a glass of choice old wine in season as both
nourishing and bloodmaking and possessing aperient virtues (notably a
good burgundy which he was a staunch believer in) still never beyond a
certain point where he invariably drew the line as it simply led to trou-
ble all round to say nothing of your being at the tender mercy of others
practically. Most of all he commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen
by all his pubhunting confreres but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on
the part of his brother medicos under all the circs.

--And that one was Judas, Stephen said, who up to then had said nothing
whatsoever of any kind.

Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the
back of the Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge where a
brazier of coke burning in front of a sentrybox or something like one
attracted their rather lagging footsteps. Stephen of his own accord stopped
for no special reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones and by the
light emanating from the brazier he could just make out the darker figure
of the corporation watchman inside the gloom of the sentrybox. He began to
remember that this had happened or had been mentioned as having happened
before but it cost him no small effort before he remembered that he recog-
nised in the sentry a quondam friend of his father's, Gumley. To avoid a
meeting he drew nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge.

--Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said.

A figure of middle height on the prowl evidently under the arches saluted
again, calling:

--Night!

Stephen of course started rather dizzily and stopped to return the
compliment. Mr Bloom actuated by motives of inherent delicacy inasmuch
as he always believed in minding his own business moved off but never-
theless remained on the Qui vive with just a shade of anxiety though
not funkyish in the least. Though unusual in the Dublin area he knew that
it was not by any means unknown for desperadoes who had next to nothing
to live on to be abroad waylaying and generally terrorising peaceable
pedestrians by placing a pistol at their head in some secluded spot out-
side the city proper, famished loiterers of the Thames embankment catego-
ry they might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp
with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moment's notice,
your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and
garrotted.

Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters,
though he was not in an over sober state himself recognised Corley's
breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley some called him
and his genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son of
inspector Corley of the G division, lately deceased, who had married
a certain Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His grand-
father Patrick Michael Corley of New Ross had married the widow of a
publican there whose maiden name had been Katherine (also) Talbot. Rum-
our had it (though not proved) that she descended from the house of the
lords Talbot de Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine
residence of its kind and well worth seeing, her mother or aunt or some
relative, a woman, as the tale went, of extreme beauty, had enjoyed the
distinction of being in service in the washkitchen. This therefore was
the reason why the still comparatively young though dissolute man who now
addressed Stephen was spoken of by some with facetious proclivities as
Lord John Corley.

Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell.
Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had
all deserted him. Furthermore he had a row with Lenehan and called him to
Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of other uncall-
edfor expressions. He was out of a job and implored of Stephen to tell him
where on God's earth he could get something, anything at all, to do. No, it
was the daughter of the mother in the washkitchen that was fostersister to
the heir of the house or else they were connected through the mother in some
way, both occurrences happening at the same time if the whole thing wasn't
a complete fabrication from start to finish. Anyhow he was all in.

--I wouldn't ask you only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God knows I'm
on the rocks.

--There'll be a job tomorrow or next day, Stephen told him, in a boys'
school at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Garrett Deasy. Try it. You may
mention my name.

--Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn't teach in a school, man. I was
never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. I got stuck twice
in the junior at the christian brothers.

--I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him.

Corley at the first go-off was inclined to suspect it was something to
do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody tart
off the street. There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs Maloney's,
but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but M'Conachie
told him you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in Winetavern
street (which was distantly suggestive to the person addressed of friar
Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too though he hadn't said a word about
it.

Though this sort of thing went on every other night or very near it
still Stephen's feelings got the better of him in a sense though he knew
that Corley's brandnew rigmarole on a par with the others was hardly de-
serving of much credence. However haud ignarus malorum miseris succurrere
disco etcetera as the Latin poet remarks especially as luck would have it
he got paid his screw after every middle of the month on the sixteenth
which was the date of the month as a matter of fact though a good bit of
the wherewithal was demolished. But the cream of the joke was nothing
would get it out of Corley's head that he was living in affluence and hadn't a
thing to do but hand out the needful. Whereas. He put his hand in a pocket
anyhow not with the idea of finding any food there but thinking he might
lend him anything up to a bob or so in lieu so that he might endeavour at
all events and get sufficient to eat but the result was in the negative for,
to his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken biscuits were all
the result of his investigation. He tried his hardest to recollect for the
moment whether he had lost as well he might have or left because in that con-
tingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much the reverse in fact. He
was altogether too fagged out to institute a thorough search though he
tried to recollect. About biscuits he dimly remembered. Who now exactly
gave them he wondered or where was or did he buy. However in another pock-
et he came across what he surmised in the dark were pennies, erroneously
however, as it turned out.

--Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him.

And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen anyhow lent him one
of them.

--Thanks, Corley answered, you're a gentleman. I'll pay you back one
time. Who's that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse in
Camden street with Boylan, the billsticker. You might put in a good word
for us to get me taken on there. I'd carry a sandwichboard only the girl
in the office told me they're full up for the next three weeks, man. God,
you've to book ahead, man, you'd think it was for the Carl Rosa. I don't
give a shite anyway so long as I get a job, even as a crossing sweeper.

Subsequently being not quite so down in the mouth after the two and
six he got he informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of Bags
Comisky that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam's, the shipchan-
dler's, bookkeeper there that used to be often round in Nagle's back
with O'Mara and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Any-
how he was lagged the night before last and fined ten bob for a drunk
and disorderly and refusing to go with the constable.

Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity of the
cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation watch-
man's sentrybox who evidently a glutton for work, it struck him, was hav-
ing a quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his own private
account while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the same time now and
then at Stephen's anything but immaculately attired interlocutor as if he
had seen that nobleman somewhere or other though where he was not in a
position to truthfully state nor had he the remotest idea when. Being a
levelheaded individual who could give points to not a few in point of shrewd
observation he also remarked on his very dilapidated hat and slouchy wearing
apparel generally testifying to a chronic impecuniosity. Palpably he was one
of his hangerson but for the matter of that it was merely a question of one
preying on his nextdoor neighbour all round, in every deep, so to put it, a
deeper depth and for the matter of that if the man in the street chanced
to be in the dock himself penal servitude with or without the option of a
fine would be a very rara avis altogether. In any case he had a consummate
amount of cool assurance intercepting people at that hour of the night or
morning. Pretty thick that was certainly.

The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom who, with his prac-
tised eye, was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the bland-
iloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he said,
laughingly, Stephen, that is:

--He is down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named Boy-
lan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.

At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr
Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so in the
direction of a bucketdredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name of Eblana,
moored alongside Customhouse quay and quite possibly out of repair,
whereupon he observed evasively:

--Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you mention it
his face was familiar to me. But, leaving that for the moment, how much did
you part with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive?

--Half a crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep somewhere.

--Needs! Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at the in-
telligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he invariably
does. Everyone according to his needs or everyone according to his deeds.
But, talking about things in general, where, added he with a smile, will
you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is out of the question. And even
supposing you did you won't get in after what occurred at Westland Row sta-
tion. Simply fag out there for nothing. I don't mean to presume to dictate
to you in the slightest degree but why did you leave your father's house?

--To seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer.

--I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom diploma-
tically returned, today in fact, or to be strictly accurate, on yes-
terday. Where does he live at present? I gathered in the course of
conversation that he had moved.

--I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered unconcernedly.
Why?

--A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in more respects than
one and a born raconteur if ever there was one. He takes great pride, quite
legitimate, out of you. You could go back perhaps, he hasarded, still think-
ing of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when it was per-
fectly evident that the other two, Mulligan, that is, and that English tou-
rist friend of his, who eventually euchred their third companion, were pa-
tently trying as if the whole bally station belonged to them to give Ste-
phen the slip in the confusion, which they did.

There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion however, such as it
was, Stephen's mind's eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his fam-
ily hearth the last time he saw it with his sister Dilly sitting by the
ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell cocoa
that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he could drink
it with the oatmealwater for milk after the Friday herrings they had eaten
at two a penny with an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and Katey, the cat
meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells and charred fish
heads and bones on a square of brown paper, in accordance with the third
precept of the church to fast and abstain on the days commanded, it being
quarter tense or if not, ember days or something like that.

--No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn't personally repose much trust in
that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr Mull-
igan, as a guide, philosopher and friend if I were in your shoes. He knows
which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he never re-
alised what it is to be without regular meals. Of course you didn't notice
as much as I did. But it wouldn't occasion me the least surprise to learn
that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic was put in your drink for some ul-
terior object.

He understood however from all he heard that Dr Mulligan was a versatile
allround man, by no means confined to medicine only, who was rapidly com-
ing to the fore in his line and, if the report was verified, bade fair to
enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future as a tony med-
ical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services in addition to
which professional status his rescue of that man from certain drowning by
artificial respiration and what they call first aid at Skerries, or Mala-
hide was it?, was, he was bound to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed which
he could not too highly praise, so that frankly he was utterly at a loss to
fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except he put it down
to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple.

--Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call picking
your brains, he ventured to throw out.

The guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented by friend-
liness which he gave at Stephen's at present morose expression of features
did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact on the problem as to
whether he had let himself be badly bamboozled to judge by two or three
lowspirited remarks he let drop or the other way about saw through the
affair and for some reason or other best known to himself allowed matters
to more or less. Grinding poverty did have that effect and he more than
conjectured that, high educational abilities though he possessed, he
experienced no little difficulty in making both ends meet.

Adjacent to the men's public urinal they perceived an icecream car round
which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting
rid of voluble expressions in their vivacious language in a particularly
animated way, there being some little differences between the par-
ties.

--Puttana madonna, che ci dia I quattrini! Ho ragione? culo rotto!

--Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano piu . . .

--Dice lui, pero!

--Mezzo.

--Farabutto! Mortacci sui!

--Ma ascolta! Cinque la testa piu . . .

Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman's shelter, an unpretentious wood-
en structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely if ever been before,
the former having previously whispered to the latter a few hints anent
the keeper of it said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat Fitzharris,
the invincible, though he could not vouch for the actual facts which
quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few moments la-
ter saw our two noctambules safely seated in a discreet corner only to
be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous collection of waifs
and strays and other nondescript specimens of the genus homo already there
engaged in eating and drinking diversified by conversation for whom they
seemingly formed an object of marked curiosity.

--Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly suggest to
break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the shape
of solid food, say, a roll of some description.

Accordingly his first act was with characteristic sangfroid to order
these commodities quietly. The hoi polloi of jarvies or stevedores or
whatever they were after a cursory examination turned their eyes appar-
ently dissatisfied, away though one redbearded bibulous individual por-
tion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor probably, still stared for some
appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention to the floor. Mr
Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, he having just a bowing
acquaintance with the language in dispute, though, to be sure, rather in a
quandary over voglio, remarked to his protege in an audible tone of voice a
propos of the battle royal in the street which was still raging fast and
furious:

--A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not write
your poetry in that language? Bella Poetria! It is so melodious and full.
Belladonna. Voglio.

Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn if he could, suffering from
lassitude generally, replied:

--To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.

--Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at the in-
ward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were abso-
lutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds it.

The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this tete-a-tete put a boiling
swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the table and a
rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed. After which he beat
a retreat to his counter, Mr Bloom determining to have a good square look
at him later on so as not to appear to. For which reason he encouraged
Stephen to proceed with his eyes while he did the honours by surreptitio-
usly pushing the cup of what was temporarily supposed to be called coffee
gradually nearer him.

--Sounds are impostures, Stephen said after a pause of some little time, like
names. Cicero, Podmore. Napoleon, Mr Goodbody. Jesus, Mr Doyle. Shakespeares
were as common as Murphies. What's in a name?

--Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Of course. Our name was
changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.

The redbearded sailor who had his weather eye on the newcomers boarded
Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in particular, squarely
by asking:

--And what might your name be?

Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion's boot but Stephen,
apparently disregarding the warm pressure from an unexpected quarter, answer-
ed:

--Dedalus.

The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes, rather
bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old Hollands and wa-
ter.

--You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length.

--I've heard of him, Stephen said.

Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently eavesdropping
too.

--He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same way and
nodding. All Irish.

--All too Irish, Stephen rejoined.

As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the whole business
and he was just asking himself what possible connection when the sailor of
his own accord turned to the other occupants of the shelter with the re-
mark:

--I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his shoulder.
The lefthand dead shot.

Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his gestures being
also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain.

--Bottles out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles. Cocks his
gun over his shoulder. Aims.

He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely. Then he screw-
ed his features up someway sideways and glared out into the night with an unpre-
possessing cast of countenance.

--Pom! he then shouted once.

The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, there being
still a further egg.

--Pom! he shouted twice.

Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding bloodthirstily:

--Buffalo Bill shoots to kill,
Never missed nor he never will.

A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness' sake just felt like asking him
whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the Bisley.

--Beg pardon, the sailor said.

--Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth.

--Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the magic influ-
ence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten years. He toured the
wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus. I seen him do that in Stock-
holm.

--Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively.

--Murphy's my name, the sailor continued. D. B. Murphy of Carrigaloe. Know
where that is?

--Queenstown harbour, Stephen replied.

--That's right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That's where
I hails from. I belongs there. That's where I hails from. My little woman's
down there. She's waiting for me, I know. For england, home and beauty.
She's my own true wife I haven't seen for seven years now, sailing about.

Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene, the homecoming
to the mariner's roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones, a
rainy night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a num-
ber of stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch
Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Le-
ary, a favourite and most trying declamation piece by the way of poor
John Casey and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way. Never about
the runaway wife coming back, however much devoted to the absentee. The
face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when he finally did breast
the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent his better half, wreck-
ed in his affections. You little expected me but I've come to stay and
make a fresh start. There she sits, a grasswidow, at the selfsame fireside.
Believes me dead, rocked in the cradle of the deep. And there sits uncle
Chubb or Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican of the Crown and An-
chor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No chair for father.
Broo! The wind! Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, postmortem child.
With a high ro! and a randy ro! and my galloping tearing tandy, O! Bow to
the inevitable. Grin and bear it. I remain with much love your brokenhear-
ted husband D B Murphy.

The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one of
the jarvies with the request:

--You don't happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you?

The jarvey addressed as it happened had not but the keeper took a die
of plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired object was
passed from hand to hand.

--Thank you, the sailor said.

He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing and with some slow stammers,
proceeded:

--We come up this morning eleven o'clock. The threemaster Rosevean from
Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this afternoon.
There's my discharge. See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S.

In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket and
handed to his neighbour a not very cleanlooking folded document.

--You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked, leaning
on the counter.

--Why, the sailor answered upon reflection upon it, I've circumnavigated a
bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China and North
America and South America. We was chased by pirates one voyage. I seen
icebergs plenty, growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the
Dardanelles under Captain Dalton, the best bloody man that ever scuttled a
ship. I seen Russia. Gospodi pomilyou. That's how the Russians prays.

--You seen queer sights, don't be talking, put in a jarvey.

--Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug. I seen queer
things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an anchor
same as I chew that quid.

He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his teeth,
bit ferociously:

--Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and the
livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent me.

He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket which seemed to be
in its way a species of repository and pushed it along the table. The print-
ed matter on it stated: Choza de indios. Beni, bolivia.

All focussed their attention at the scene exhibited, a group of savage women
in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning, sleeping amid
a swarm of infants (there must have been quite a score of them) outside some
primitive shanties of osier.

--Chews coca all day, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs like
breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can't bear no more children.
See them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse's liver raw.

His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns for
several minutes if not more.

--Know how to keep them off? he inquired generally.

Nobody volunteering a statement he winked, saying:

--Glass. That boggles 'em. Glass.

Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over the card
to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It ran as follows:
Tarjeta Postal, Senor A Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago, Chile. There was
no message evidently, as he took particular notice.

Though not an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the egg-
sniping transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the Lazar-
illo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in Maritana on which occasion
the former's ball passed through the latter's hat) having detected a
discrepancy between his name (assuming he was the person he represented
himself to be and not sailing under false colours after having boxed the
compass on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the fictitious addressee of the
missive which made him nourish some suspicions of our friend's Bona fides
nevertheless it reminded him in a way of a longcherished plan he meant to
one day realise some Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London via long
sea not to say that he had ever travelled extensively to any great extent
but he was at heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he had con-
sistently remained a landlubber except you call going to Holyhead which was
his longest. Martin Cunningham frequently said he would work a pass through
Egan but some deuced hitch or other eternally cropped up with the net re-
sult that the scheme fell through. But even suppose it did come to planking
down the needful and breaking Boyd's heart it was not so dear, purse per-
mitting, a few guineas at the outside considering the fare to Mullingar
where he figured on going was five and six, there and back. The trip would
benefit health on account of the bracing ozone and be in every way thoro-
ughly pleasurable, especially for a chap whose liver was out of order,
seeing the different places along the route, Plymouth, Falmouth, Southam-
pton and so on culminating in an instructive tour of the sights of the
great metropolis, the spectacle of our modern Babylon where doubtless he
would see the greatest improvement, tower, abbey, wealth of Park lane to
renew acquaintance with. Another thing just struck him as a by no means
bad notion was he might have a gaze around on the spot to see about trying
to make arrangements about a concert tour of summer music embracing the
most prominent pleasure resorts, Margate with mixed bathing and firstrate
hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so on, beautiful
Bournemouth, the Channel islands and similar bijou spots, which might
prove highly remunerative. Not, of course, with a hole and corner scratch
company or local ladies on the job, witness Mrs C P M'Coy type lend me
your valise and I'll post you the ticket. No, something top notch, an all star
Irish caste, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company with his own legal
consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast to the Elster Grimes and
Moody-Manners, perfectly simple matter and he was quite sanguine of
success, providing puffs in the local papers could be managed by some
fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the indispensable wires and thus
combine business with pleasure. But who? That was the rub.

Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a great field was to
be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace with the
times Apropos of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was mooted, was
once more on the tapis in the circumlocution departments with the usual
quantity of red tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom and dunderheads
generally. A great opportunity there certainly was for push and enterprise
to meet the travelling needs of the public at large, the average man, i.e.
Brown, Robinson and Co.

It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no
small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the
system really needed toning up, for the matter of a couple of paltry pounds
was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead of being
always and ever cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took me for a wife.
After all, hang it, they had their eleven and more humdrum months of it and
merited a radical change of venue after the grind of city life in the sum-
mertime for choice when dame Nature is at her spectacular best constituting
nothing short of a new lease of life. There were equally excellent opportu-
nities for vacationists in the home island, delightful sylvan spots for re-
juvenation, offering a plethora of attractions as well as a bracing tonic
for the system in and around Dublin and its picturesque environs even, Po-
ulaphouca to which there was a steamtram, but also farther away from the
madding crowd in Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of Ireland, an ideal
neighbourhood for elderly wheelmen so long as it didn't come down, and in
the wilds of Donegal where if report spoke true the Coup d'oeil was excee-
dingly grand though the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable so that
the influx of visitors was not as yet all that it might be considering the
signal benefits to be derived from it while Howth with its historic asso-
ciations and otherwise, Silken Thomas, Grace O'Malley, George IV, rhodo-
dendrons several hundred feet above sealevel was a favourite haunt with
all sorts and conditions of men especially in the spring when young men's
fancy, though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off the cliffs by
design or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their left leg, it being
only about three quarters of an hour's run from the pillar. Because of
course uptodate tourist travelling was as yet merely in its infancy, so
to speak, and the accommodation left much to be desired. Interesting to
fathom it seemed to him from a motive of curiosity, pure and simple, was
whether it was the traffic that created the route or viceversa or the two
sides in fact. He turned back the other side of the card, picture, and
passed it along to Stephen.

--I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had little
pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened and every pill
was something different. One was a ship, another was a house, another was
a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly added, the chinks does.

Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces the globe-
trotter went on, adhering to his adventures.

--And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his back.
Knife like that.

Whilst speaking he produced a dangerouslooking claspknife quite in keeping
with his character and held it in the striking position.

--In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers. Fellow
hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. Prepare to meet your god,
says he. Chuk! It went into his back up to the butt.

His heavy glance drowsily roaming about kind of defied their further que-
stions even should they by any chance want to.

--That's a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable stil-
etto.

After which harrowing denouement sufficient to appal the stoutest he
snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in
his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.

--They're great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in the
dark said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought the park
murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them using
knives.

At this remark passed obviously in the spirit of where ignorance is bliss
Mr B. and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both instinctively ex-
changed meaning glances, in a religious silence of the strictly entre nous
variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper, not turn-
ing a hair, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His in-
scrutable face which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itself,
beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he didn't understand
one jot of what was going on. Funny, very!

There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading in fits
and starts a stained by coffee evening journal, another the card with the
natives choza de, another the seaman's discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as he
was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly
recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well as yesterday,
roughly some score of years previously in the days of the land troubles,
when it took the civilised world by storm, figuratively speaking, early
in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was just turned fifteen.

--Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers.

The request being complied with he clawed them up with a scrape.

--Have you seen the rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired.

The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay or
no.

--Ah, you've touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point, thinking he
had, in the hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences but he
failed to do so, simply letting spirt a jet of spew into the sawdust, and
shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.

--What year would that be about? Mr B interrogated. Can you recall the
boats?

Our soi-disant sailor munched heavily awhile hungrily before answer-
ing:

--I'm tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships. Salt
junk all the time.

Tired seemingly, he ceased. His questioner perceiving that he was not like-
ly to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer, fell to
woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the globe, suf-
fice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed, it covered fully
three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly what it meant to rule
the waves. On more than one occasion, a dozen at the lowest, near the North
Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a superannuated old salt, evidently der-
elict, seated habitually near the not particularly redolent sea on the wall,
staring quite obliviously at it and it at him, dreaming of fresh woods and
pastures new as someone somewhere sings. And it left him wondering why. Pos-
ibly he had tried to find out the secret for himself, floundering up and
down the antipodes and all that sort of thing and over and under, well, not
exactly under, tempting the fates. And the odds were twenty to nil there was
really no secret about it at all. Nevertheless, without going into the minutiae
of the business, the eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in all its
glory and in the natural course of things somebody or other had to sail on it
and fly in the face of providence though it merely went to show how people
usually contrived to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow like the
hell idea and the lottery and insurance which were run on identically the
same lines so that for that very reason if no other lifeboat Sunday was a
highly laudable institution to which the public at large, no matter where
living inland or seaside, as the case might be, having it brought home to
them like that should extend its gratitude also to the harbourmasters and
coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid the
elements whatever the season when duty called Ireland expects that every man
and so on and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the wintertime not for-
getting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment,
rounding which he once with his daughter had experienced some remarkably
choppy, not to say stormy, weather.

--There was a fellow sailed with me in the Rover, the old seadog, himself
a rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up a soft job as gentleman's val-
et at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I've on me and he gave me an
oilskin and that jackknife. I'm game for that job, shaving and brushup. I
hate roaming about. There's my son now, Danny, run off to sea and his mo-
ther got him took in a draper's in Cork where he could be drawing easy
money.

--What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the side,
bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away from
the carking cares of office, unwashed of course and in a seedy getup and
a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.

--Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance, my son, Danny?
He'd be about eighteen now, way I figure it.

The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean anyhow shirt
with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was to be seen
an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink intended to represent an an-
chor.

--There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked, sure as nuts. I
must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It's them black lads I objects to. I
hate those buggers. Suck your blood dry, they does.

Seeing they were all looking at his chest he accommodatingly dragged his
shirt more open so that on top of the timehonoured symbol of the mariner's
hope and rest they had a full view of the figure 16 and a young man's side-
face looking frowningly rather.

--Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were lying becalmed
off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton. Fellow, the name of Antonio,
done that. There he is himself, a Greek.

--Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.

That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the. Someway
in his. Squeezing or.

--See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And there
he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his fingers, some
special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.

And in point of fact the young man named Antonio's livid face did actually
look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the unreserved ad-
miration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, who this time stretched ov-
er.

--Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He's gone too.
Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay.

He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression of
before.

--Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said.

--And what's the number for? loafer number two queried.

--Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.

--Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time with
some sort of a half smile for a brief duration only in the direction of the
questioner about the number. Ate. A Greek he was.

And then he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his alleged
end:

--As bad as old Antonio,
For he left me on my ownio.

The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat
peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on
her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr Bloom,
scarcely knowing which way to look, turned away on the moment fluster-
fied but outwardly calm, and, picking up from the table the pink sheet
of the Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if such he was, had laid a-
side, he picked it up and looked at the pink of the paper though why pink.
His reason for so doing was he recognised on the moment round the door
the same face he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that afternoon on Or-
mond quay, the partially idiotic female, namely, of the lane who knew the
lady in the brown costume does be with you (Mrs B.) and begged the chance
of his washing. Also why washing which seemed rather vague than not, your
washing. Still candour compelled him to admit he had washed his wife's un-
dergarments when soiled in Holles street and women would and did too a man's
similar garments initialled with Bewley and Draper's marking ink (hers were,
that is) if they really loved him, that is to say, love me, love my dirty
shirt. Still just then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the female's room
more than her company so it came as a genuine relief when the keeper made
her a rude sign to take herself off. Round the side of the Evening Telegraph
he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the side of the door
with a kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was not exactly
all there, viewing with evident amusement the group of gazers round
skipper Murphy's nautical chest and then there was no more of her.

--The gunboat, the keeper said.

--It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, medically I am speaking, how
a wretched creature like that from the Lock hospital reeking with disease
can be barefaced enough to solicit or how any man in his sober senses, if
he values his health in the least. Unfortunate creature! Of course I suppose
some man is ultimately responsible for her condition. Still no matter what
the cause is from . . .

Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely remark-
ing:

--In this country people sell much more than she ever had and do a roaring
trade. Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to buy the soul.
She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap.

The elder man, though not by any manner of means an old maid or a prude,
said it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be put a stop
to instanter to say that women of that stamp (quite apart from any old-
maidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil, were not licen-
sed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a thing, he could
truthfully state, he, as a paterfamilias, was a stalwart advocate of from
the very first start. Whoever embarked on a policy of the sort, he said,
and ventilated the matter thoroughly would confer a lasting boon on ever-
ybody concerned.

--You as a good catholic, he observed, talking of body and soul, believe
in the soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower as such, as
distinct from any outside object, the table, let us say, that cup. I be-
lieve in that myself because it has been explained by competent men as
the convolutions of the grey matter. Otherwise we would never have such
inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you?

Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try
and concentrate and remember before he could say:

--They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance and therefore
incorruptible. It would be immortal, I understand, but for the possibility of
its annihilation by its First Cause Who, from all I can hear, is quite capable
of adding that to the number of His other practical jokes, Corruptio per se
and Corruptio per accidens both being excluded by court etiquette.

Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the mysti-
cal finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still he felt bound
to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly rejoining:

--Simple? I shouldn't think that is the proper word. Of course, I grant you,
to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a blue moon.
But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for instance to invent
those rays Rontgen did or the telescope like Edison, though I believe it was
before his time Galileo was the man, I mean, and the same applies to the laws,
for example, of a farreaching natural phenomenon such as electricity but it's
a horse of quite another colour to say you believe in the existence of a sup-
ernatural God.

--O that, Stephen expostulated, has been proved conclusively by several of
the bestknown passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial evidence.

On this knotty point however the views of the pair, poles apart as they
were both in schooling and everything else with the marked difference in
their respective ages, clashed.

--Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, sticking to his ori-
ginal point with a smile of unbelief. I'm not so sure about that. That's a
matter for everyman's opinion and, without dragging in the sectarian side
of the business, I beg to differ with you in toto there. My belief is, to
tell you the candid truth, that those bits were genuine forgeries all of
them put in by monks most probably or it's the big question of our national
poet over again, who precisely wrote them like Hamlet and Bacon, as, you who
know your Shakespeare infinitely better than I, of course I needn't tell you.
Can't you drink that coffee, by the way? Let me stir it. And take a piece of
that bun. It's like one of our skipper's bricks disguised. Still no-one can
give what he hasn't got. Try a bit.

--Couldn't, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs for the moment
refusing to dictate further.

Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom thought well to stir
or try to the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with something
approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its temperance (and lu-
crative) work. To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or nay
did a world of good, shelters such as the present one they were in run on
teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, dramatic evenings and useful
lectures (admittance free) by qualified men for the lower orders. On the
other hand he had a distinct and painful recollection they paid his
wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been prominently associated with it at
one time, a very modest remuneration indeed for her pianoplaying. The i-
dea, he was strongly inclined to believe, was to do good and net a profit,
there being no competition to speak of. Sulphate of copper poison SO4 or
something in some dried peas he remembered reading of in a cheap eating-
house somewhere but he couldn't remember when it was or where. Anyhow in-
spection, medical inspection, of all eatables seemed to him more than ever
necessary which possibly accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble's Vi-Cocoa
on account of the medical analysis involved.

--Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being stirred.

Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it Stephen lifted the heavy mug
from the brown puddle it clopped out of when taken up by the handle and
took a sip of the offending beverage.

--Still it's solid food, his good genius urged, I'm a stickler for solid
food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but re-
gular meals as the Sine qua non for any kind of proper work, mental or
manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different man.

--Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But O, oblige me by taking away that
knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.

Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated article,
a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly Roman or
antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was the least
conspicuous point about it.

--Our mutual friend's stories are like himself, Mr Bloom apropos of knives
remarked to his confidante sotto voce. Do you think they are genuine? He
could spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and lie like old
boots. Look at him.

Yet still though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air life was full
of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it was quite
within the bounds of possibility that it was not an entire fabrication
though at first blush there was not much inherent probability in all the
spoof he got off his chest being strictly accurate gospel.

He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and
Sherlockholmesing him up ever since he clapped eyes on him. Though a well-
preserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness, there
was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a jail deliv-
ery and it required no violent stretch of imagination to associate such a
weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity. He might
even have done for his man supposing it was his own case he told, as peo-
ple often did about others, namely, that he killed him himself and had
served his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to say nothing
of the Antonio personage (no relation to the dramatic personage of ident-
ical name who sprang from the pen of our national poet) who expiated his
crimes in the melodramatic manner above described. On the other hand he
might be only bluffing, a pardonable weakness because meeting unmistaka-
ble mugs, Dublin residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad
would tempt any ancient mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long
bow about the schooner Hesperus and etcetera. And when all was said and
done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a prover-
bial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.

--Mind you, I'm not saying that it's all a pure invention, he resumed.
Analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. Giants, though
that is rather a far cry, you see once in a way, Marcella the midget queen.
In those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some Aztecs, as they are
called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn't straighten their legs if you paid
them because the muscles here, you see, he proceeded, indicating on his
companion the brief outline of the sinews or whatever you like to call them
behind the right knee, were utterly powerless from sitting that way so long
cramped up, being adored as gods. There's an example again of simple souls.

However reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures (who re-
minded him a bit of Ludwig, alias Ledwidge, when he occupied the boards of
the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the management in the
Flying Dutchman, a stupendous success, and his host of admirers came in
large numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear him though ships of any
sort, phantom or the reverse, on the stage usually fell a bit flat as al-
so did trains) there was nothing intrinsically incompatible about it, he
conceded. On the contrary that stab in the back touch was quite in keep-
ing with those italianos though candidly he was none the less free to ad-
mit those icecreamers and friers in the fish way not to mention the chip
potato variety and so forth over in little Italy there near the Coombe were
sober thrifty hardworking fellows except perhaps a bit too given to pothunt-
ing the harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at night
so as to have a good old succulent tuckin with garlic De rigueur off him or
her next day on the quiet and, he added, on the cheap.

--Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like that,
impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own hands and
give you your quietus doublequick with those poignards they carry in the a-
bdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally. My wife is, so to
speak, Spanish, half that is. Point of fact she could actually claim Spanish
nationality if she wanted, having been born in (technically) Spain, i.e. Gi-
braltar. She has the Spanish type. Quite dark, regular brunette, black. I
for one certainly believe climate accounts for character. That's why I ask-
ed you if you wrote your poetry in Italian.

--The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, were very passionate
about ten shillings. Roberto ruba roba sua.

--Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed.

--Then, Stephen said staring and rambling on to himself or some unknown
listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and the isosceles
triangle miss Portinari he fell in love with and Leonardo and san Tommaso
Mastino.

--It's in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are washed in the blood
of the sun. Coincidence I just happened to be in the Kildare street museum
today, shortly prior to our meeting if I can so call it, and I was just look-
ing at those antique statues there. The splendid proportions of hips, bosom.
You simply don't knock against those kind of women here. An exception here
and there. Handsome yes, pretty in a way you find but what I'm talking about
is the female form. Besides they have so little taste in dress, most of them,
which greatly enhances a woman's natural beauty, no matter what you say.
Rumpled stockings, it may be, possibly is, a foible of mine but still it's a thing
I simply hate to see.

Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and then the o-
thers got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog, goo col-
lisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy of course had his own
say to say. He had doubled the cape a few odd times and weathered a
monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all those perils of
the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him or words to that
effect, a pious medal he had that saved him.

So then after that they drifted on to the wreck off Daunt's rock, wreck
of that illfated Norwegian barque nobody could think of her name for the
moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry Campbell
remembered it Palme on Booterstown strand. That was the talk of the town
that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of original verse of
distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish Times), breakers running o-
ver her and crowds and crowds on the shore in commotion petrified with
horror. Then someone said something about the case of the s. s. Lady
Cairns of Swansea run into by the Mona which was on an opposite tack in
rather muggyish weather and lost with all hands on deck. No aid was given.
Her master, the Mona's, said he was afraid his collision bulkhead would
give way. She had no water, it appears, in her hold.

At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for him to
unfurl a reef the sailor vacated his seat.

--Let me cross your bows mate, he said to his neighbour who was just
gently dropping off into a peaceful doze.

He made tracks heavily, slowly with a dumpy sort of a gait to the door,
stepped heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter and bore
due left. While he was in the act of getting his bearings Mr Bloom who
noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship's rum
sticking one out of each pocket for the private consumption of his burning
interior, saw him produce a bottle and uncork it or unscrew and, applying
its nozzle to his lips, take a good old delectable swig out of it with a
gurgling noise. The irrepressible Bloom, who also had a shrewd suspicion
that the old stager went out on a manoeuvre after the counterattraction in
the shape of a female who however had disappeared to all intents and pur-
poses, could by straining just perceive him, when duly refreshed by his
rum puncheon exploit, gaping up at the piers and girders of the Loop line
rather out of his depth as of course it was all radically altered since his
last visit and greatly improved. Some person or persons invisible directed
him to the male urinal erected by the cleansing committee all over the place
for the purpose but after a brief space of time during which silence reigned
supreme the sailor, evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at
hand, the noise of his bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on
the ground where it apparently awoke a horse of the cabrank. A hoof scooped
anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly disturbed
in his sentrybox by the brazier of live coke the watcher of the corporation
stones who, though now broken down and fast breaking up, was none other in
stern reality than the Gumley aforesaid, now practically on the parish
rates, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin in all human probability from
dictates of humanity knowing him before shifted about and shuffled in his
box before composing his limbs again in to the arms of Morpheus, a truly
amazing piece of hard lines in its most virulent form on a fellow most re-
spectably connected and familiarised with decent home comforts all his life
who came in for a cool 100 pounds a year at one time which of course the
doublebarrelled ass proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of. And there
he was at the end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably
pink without a beggarly stiver. He drank needless to be told and it pointed
only once more a moral when he might quite easily be in a large way of bus-
iness if--a big if, however--he had contrived to cure himself of his partic-
ular partiality.

All meantime were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping,
coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel of the same
thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra basin, the
only launch that year. Right enough the harbours were there only no ships
ever called.

There were wrecks and wreckers, the keeper said, who was evidently au
fait.

What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only
rock in Galway bay when the Galway harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr
Worthington or some name like that, eh? Ask the then captain, he advised
them, how much palmoil the British government gave him for that day's work,
Captain John Lever of the Lever Line.

--Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor, now returning after his
private potation and the rest of his exertions.

That worthy picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or words growled
in wouldbe music but with great vim some kind of chanty or other in seconds
or thirds. Mr Bloom's sharp ears heard him then expectorate the plug probably
(which it was), so that he must have lodged it for the time being in his fist
while he did the drinking and making water jobs and found it a bit sour after
the liquid fire in question. Anyhow in he rolled after his successful libati-
on-cum-potation, introducing an atmosphere of drink into the soiree, boister-
ously trolling, like a veritable son of a seacook:

--The biscuits was as hard as brass
And the beef as salt as Lot's Wife's arse.
O, Johnny Lever!
Johnny Lever, O!

After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene
and regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form provid-
ed. Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to grind, was
airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the natural re-
sources of Ireland or something of that sort which he described in his len-
gthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on the face of God's earth,
far and away superior to England, with coal in large quantities, six million
pounds worth of pork exported every year, ten millions between butter and
eggs and all the riches drained out of it by England levying taxes on the
poor people that paid through the nose always and gobbling up the best meat
in the market and a lot more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conver-
sation accordingly became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You
could grow any mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was that
colonel Everard down there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find
anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated cre-
scendo with no uncertain voice, thoroughly monopolising all the conversa-
tion, was in store for mighty England, despite her power of pelf on account
of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The
Germans and the Japs were going to have their little lookin, he affirmed.
The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagem England was toppling
already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he
explained to them about the vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero,
a point his auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their atten-
tion by showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every
Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live
for Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her
sons.

Silence all round marked the termination of his finale. The impervious na-
vigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed.

--Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a bit
peeved in response to the foregoing truism.

To which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the keeper concurred
but nevertheless held to his main view.

--Who's the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately in-
terrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals and
generals we've got? Tell me that.

--The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial blemishes
apart.

--That's right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic peasant.
He's the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?

While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added
he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman
worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few irascible
words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the list-
eners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they did-
n't indulge in recriminations and come to blows.

From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was ra-
ther inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for, pen-
ding that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was ful-
ly cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless
they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather concealed their
strength than the opposite. It was quite on a par with the quixotic idea
in certain quarters that in a hundred million years the coal seam of the
sister island would be played out and if, as time went on, that turned out
to be how the cat jumped all he could personally say on the matter was that
as a host of contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere
then it was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both
countries even though poles apart. Another little interesting point, the
amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, reminded him
Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so, in
fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of them, the licensee of
the place rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible,
and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on all fours
with the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged as the
lookeron, a student of the human soul if anything, the others seeing least
of the game. And as for the lessee or keeper, who probably wasn't the other
person at all, he (B.) couldn't help feeling and most properly it was bet-
ter to give people like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot
altogether and refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in
private life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of
a Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence or king's now like
Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that
he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet, though
such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom in any shape
or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it (while inwardly remaining
what he was) a certain kind of admiration for a man who had actually brand-
ished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his political convictions
(though, personally, he would never be a party to any such thing), off the
same bat as those love vendettas of the south, have her or swing for her,
when the husband frequently, after some words passed between the two con-
cerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (he having had the pair
watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an al-
ternative postnuptial liaison by plunging his knife into her, until it just
struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for
the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably
informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea
some legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case that was very ancient
history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had
transparently outlived his welcome. He ought to have either died naturally
or on the scaffold high. Like actresses, always farewell positively last
performance then come up smiling again. Generous to a fault of course,
temperamental, no economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping at
the bone for the shadow. So similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that
Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some l s d. in the course of his perambulations
round the docks in the congenial atmosphere of the Old Ireland tavern,
come back to Erin and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so
long before the same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he simply but
effectually silenced the offender.

--He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the whole
eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and in a heat-
ed fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain facts in the least
told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his family like me
though in reality I'm not. That was one for him. A soft answer turns away
wrath. He hadn't a word to say for himself as everyone saw. Am I not
right?

He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride
at the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed
to glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly.

--Ex quibus, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or four
eyes conversing, Christus or Bloom his name is or after all any other,
secundum carnem.

--Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides of
the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right
and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though e-
very country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government
it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all very fine to
boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality. I resent vio-
lence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or
stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It's
a patentabsurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round
the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so to speak.

--Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, Stephen assented,
between Skinner's alley and Ormond market.

Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that
was overwhelmingly right. And the whole world was full of that sort of
thing.

--You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of con-
flicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely . . .

All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad
blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erro-
neously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were
very largely a question of the money question which was at the back
of everything greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.

--They accuse, remarked he audibly.

He turned away from the others who probably and spoke nearer to, so as
the others in case they.

--Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused of
ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would
you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the
inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an
uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer for, im-
ported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper spirit. They
are practical and are proved to be so. I don't want to indulge in any be-
cause you know the standard works on the subject and then orthodox as you
are. But in the economic, not touching religion, domain the priest spells
poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war, compared with goahead America.
Turks. It's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd go straight
to heaven when they die they'd try to live better, at least so I think.
That's the juggle on which the p.p's raise the wind on false pretences.
I'm, he resumed with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as that rude per-
son I told you about at the outset and I want to see everyone, concluded
he, all creeds and classes Pro rata having a comfortable tidysized income,
in no niggard fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of 300 pounds
per annum. That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be
provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that's
my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. Ubi patria, as we lear-
ned a smattering of in our classical days in Alma Mater, vita bene. Where
you can live well, the sense is, if you work.

Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this synopsis
of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular. He could hear,
of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those crabs about Ringsend
in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours of different sorts of the same
sand where they had a home somewhere beneath or seemed to. Then he look-
ed up and saw the eyes that said or didn't say the words the voice he heard
said, if you work.

--Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work.

The eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, the person who
owned them pro tem. observed or rather his voice speaking did, all must work,
have to, together.

--I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest pos-
sible sense. Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the thing.
Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays. That's
work too. Important work. After all, from the little I know of you, after
all the money expended on your education you are entitled to recoup your-
self and command your price. You have every bit as much right to live by
your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the peasant has. What? You both
belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each is equally important.

--You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may be
important because I belong to the Faubourg saint patrice called Ireland for
short.

--I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.

--But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important because
it belongs to me.

--What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under some
misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the latter portion.
What was it you . . .?

Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of coffee
or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding:

--We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.

At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked down
but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to put
on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was
clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his recent orgy
spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way foreign to his sober
state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B attached the utmost importance
had not been all that was needful or he hadn't been familiarised with the
right sort of people. With a touch of fear for the young man beside him
whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some consternation remember-
ing he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more especially reminding
him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw much light on the sub-
ject, however, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that prom-
ised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of premature decay and nobody to
blame but themselves. For instance there was the case of O'Callaghan, for
one, the halfcrazy faddist, respectably connected though of inadequate
means, with his mad vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and
making himself a nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of
ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then
the usual denouement after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got land-
ed into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a
strong hint to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as
not to be made amenable under section two of the criminal law amendment
act, certain names of those subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged for
reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting
two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to,
Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the
go in the seventies or thereabouts even in the house of lords because early
in life the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of
the upper ten and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of
the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crow-
ned heads running counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of
years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing
good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the
reason they thought they were probably whatever it was except women chiefly
who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being largely a mat-
ter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like distinctive underclo-
thing should, and every welltailored man must, trying to make the gap wider
between them by innuendo and give more of a genuine filip to acts of impro-
priety between the two, she unbuttoned his and then he untied her, mind the
pin, whereas savages in the cannibal islands, say, at ninety degrees in the
shade not caring a continental. However, reverting to the original, there
were on the other hand others who had forced their way to the top from the
lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius,
that. With brains, sir.

For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even
to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could not
exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the bad having in
fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the acquaintance of someone
of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection would amply re-
pay any small. Intellectual stimulation, as such, was, he felt, from time
to time a firstrate tonic for the mind. Added to which was the coincidence
of meeting, discussion, dance, row, old salt of the here today and gone
tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of events, all went to make
up a miniature cameo of the world we live in especially as the lives of
the submerged tenth, viz. coalminers, divers, scavengers etc., were very
much under the microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he wonder-
ed whether he might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr
Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing suppose he were to pen something
out of the common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one
guinea per column. My Experiences, let us say, in a Cabman's shelter.

The pink edition extra sporting of the Telegraph tell a graphic lie lay,
as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just puzzling again,
far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the preceding rebus
the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard was addressed A. Boudin
find the captain's age, his eyes went aimlessly over the respective captions
which came under his special province the allembracing give us this day
our daily press. First he got a bit of a start but it turned out to be
only something about somebody named H. du Boyes, agent for typewriters or
something like that. Great battle, Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish, 200 pounds
damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration Swindle. Letter from His Grace. Will-
iam. Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup. Victory of outsider Throwaway recalls
Derby of ‘92 when Capt. Marshall's dark horse Sir Hugo captured the blue
ribband at long odds. New York disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and
Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.

So to change the subject he read about Dignam R. I. P. which, he re-
flected, was anything but a gay sendoff. Or a change of address any-
way.

--This morning (Hynes put it in of course) the remains of the late Mr Pat-
rick Dignam were removed from his residence, no 9 Newbridge Avenue, Sandy-
mount, for interment in Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a most popu-
lar and genial personality in city life and his demise after a brief ill-
ness came as a great shock to citizens of all classes by whom he is deeply
regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the deceased were pre-
sent, were carried out (certainly Hynes wrote it with a nudge from Corny)
by Messrs H. J. O'Neill and Son, 164 North Strand Road. The mourners
included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan (brother-in-law), Jno.
Henry Menton, Solr, Martin Cunningham, John Power,.)Eatondph 1/8
dorador douradora (must be where he called Monks the Dayfather about
Keyes's ad) Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus, Stephen Dedalus B.A., Edw.
J. Lambert, Cornelius T. Kelleher, Joseph M'C Hynes, L. Boom, CP
M'Coy --M'Intosh and several others.

Nettled not a little by L. Boom (as it incorrectly stated) and the line
of bitched type but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M'Coy and
Stephen Dedalus B. A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their
total absence (to say nothing of M'Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out to his
companion B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness, not
forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints.

--Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked as soon as his bottom jaw
would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it.

--It is. Really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded to
the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there could
be no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and a bit
flabbergasted at Myles Crawford's after all managing to. There.

While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the nonce
his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and starts
with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three, his side. Val-
ue 1000 sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added. For entire colts and fillies.
Mr F. Alexander's Throwaway, b. h. by Rightaway, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs (W.
Lane) 1, lord Howard de Walden's Zinfandel (M. Cannon) z, Mr W. Bass's
Sceptre 3. Betting 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway (off). Sceptre
a shade heavier, 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway (off). Throwaway
and Zinfandel stood close order. It was anybody's race then the rank out-
sider drew to the fore, got long lead, beating lord Howard de Walden's
chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass's bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile course.
Winner trained by Braime so that Lenehan's version of the business was all
pure buncombe. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1000 sovs with
3000 in specie. Also ran: J de Bremond's (French horse Bantam Lyons was
anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) Maximum ii.
Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though that
halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get left. Of
course gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing though as
the event turned out the poor fool hadn't much reason to congratulate
himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it reduced itself to
eventually.

--There was every indication they would arrive at that, he, Bloom, said.

--Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.

One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read: Re-
turn of parnell. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was in
that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it was
killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for a time
after committee room no 15 until he was his old self again with no- one
to point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone down on
their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his senses.
Dead he wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought
over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer gen-
eral. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and so on.

All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their
memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels and
not singly but in their thousands and then complete oblivion because it
was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely of course there was even a shadow
of truth in the stones and, even supposing, he thought a return highly
inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in his
death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his
various different political arrangements were nearing completion or wheth-
er it transpired he owed his death to his having neglected to change his
boots and clothes-after a wetting when a cold resulted and failing to con-
sult a specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually died of
it amid widespread regret before a fortnight was at an end or quite possi-
bly they were distressed to find the job was taken out of their hands. Of
course nobody being acquainted with his movements even before there was
absolutely no clue as to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the Alice,
where art thou order even prior to his starting to go under several alias-
es such as Fox and Stewart so the remark which emanated from friend cabby
might be within the bounds of possibility. Naturally then it would prey on
his mind as a born leader of men which undoubtedly he was and a commanding
figure, a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockin-
ged feet, whereas Messrs So and So who, though they weren't even a patch
on the former man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were
very few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with
feet of clay, and then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on him
with mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You had
to come back. That haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the understudy
in the title role how to. He saw him once on the auspicious occasion when
they broke up the type in the Insuppressible or was it United Ireland, a
privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in point of fact, handed him his
silk hat when it was knocked off and he said Thank you, excited as he
undoubtedly was under his frigid exterior notwithstanding the little mis-
adventure mentioned between the cup and the lip: what's bred in the bone.
Still as regards return. You were a lucky dog if they didn't set the ter-
rier at you directly you got back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually follow-
ed, Tom for and Dick and Harry against. And then, number one, you came
up against the man in possession and had to produce your credentials like
the claimant in the Tichborne case, Roger Charles Tichborne, Bella was the
boat's name to the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in as
the evidence went to show and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink,
lord Bellew was it, as he might very easily have picked up the details
from some pal on board ship and then, when got up to tally with the des-
cription given, introduce himself with: Excuse me, my name is so and so
or some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, as Bloom said to
the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under dis-
cussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land first.

--That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor
commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.

--Fine lump of a woman all the same, the Soi-disant townclerk Henry Camp-
bell remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man's thighs. I
seen her picture in a barber's. The husband was a captain or an officer.

--Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a cottonball one.

This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair a-
mount of laughter among his entourage. As regards Bloom he, without the
faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the door
and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary in-
terest at the time when the facts, to make matters worse, were made public
with the usual affectionate letters that passed between them full of sweet
nothings. First it was strictly Platonic till nature intervened and an
attachment sprang up between them till bit by bit matters came to a climax
and the matter became the talk of the town till the staggering blow came
as a welcome intelligence to not a few evildisposed, however, who were
resolved upon encompassing his downfall though the thing was public prop-
erty all along though not to anything like the sensational extent that it
subsequently blossomed into. Since their names were coupled, though, since
he was her declared favourite, where was the particular necessity to pro-
claim it to the rank and file from the housetops, the fact, namely, that
he had shared her bedroom which came out in the witnessbox on oath when
a thrill went through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the
shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a
particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with
the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having gained admittance in the
same fashion, a fact the weeklies, addicted to the lubric a little, simply
coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was it
was simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch, with nothing
in common between them beyond the name, and then a real man arriving on the
scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms
and forgetting home ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's smiles.
The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped up. Can
real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist be-
tween married folk? Poser. Though it was no concern of theirs absolutely if
he regarded her with affection, carried away by a wave of folly. A magnifi-
cent specimen of manhood he was truly augmented obviously by gifts of a high
order, as compared with the other military supernumerary that is (who was
just the usual everyday farewell, my Gallant captain kind of an individual
in the light dragoons, the l8th hussars to be accurate) and inflammable
doubtless (the fallen leader, that is, not the other) in his own peculiar
way which she of course, woman, quickly perceived as highly likely to carve
his way to fame which he almost bid fair to do till the priests and minis-
ters of the gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents, and his be-
loved evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural parts
of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that ex-
ceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his matri-
monial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head much in the same
way as the fabled ass's kick. Looking back now in a retrospective kind of
arrangement all seemed a kind of dream. And then coming back was the worst
thing you ever did because it went without saying you would feel out of
place as things always moved with the times. Why, as he reflected, Irish-
town strand, a locality he had not been in for quite a number of years
looked different somehow since, as it happened, he went to reside on the
north side. North or south, however, it was just the wellknown case of
hot passion, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance
and just bore out the very thing he was saying as she also was Spanish
or half so, types that wouldn't do things by halves, passionate abandon
of the south, casting every shred of decency to the winds.

--Just bears out what I was saying, he, with glowing bosom said to Stephen,
about blood and the sun. And, if I don't greatly mistake she was Spanish
too.

--The king of Spain's daughter, Stephen answered, adding something or
other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and
the first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and
so many.

--Was she? Bloom ejaculated, surprised though not astonished by any means,
I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there, it was as
she lived there. So, Spain.

Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket Sweets of, which reminded him by
the by of that Capel street library book out of date, he took out his
pocketbook and, turning over the various contents it contained rapidly
finally he.

--Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a faded
photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type?

Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large
sized lady with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion as she
was in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously
low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than
vision of breasts, her full lips parted and some perfect teeth, standing
near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano on the rest of which was In Old
Madrid, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all the vogue. Her
(the lady's) eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen, about to smile about
something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, Dublin's pre-
mier photographic artist, being responsible for the esthetic execution.

--Mrs Bloom, my wife the Prima donna Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom indicat-
ed. Taken a few years since. In or about ninety six. Very like her
then.

Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his le-
gal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major Brian
Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a singer
having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered barely
sweet sixteen. As for the face it was a speaking likeness in expression
but it did not do justice to her figure which came in for a lot of notice
usually and which did not come out to the best advantage in that getup. She
could without difficulty, he said, have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell
on certain opulent curves of the. He dwelt, being a bit of an artist in his
spare time, on the female form in general developmentally because, as it so
happened, no later than that afternoon he had seen those Grecian statues,
perfectly developed as works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could
give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry, all the rest. Yes,
puritanisme, it does though Saint Joseph's sovereign thievery alors (Band-
ez!) Figne toi trop. Whereas no photo could because it simply wasn't art
in a word.

The spirit moving him he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar's good
example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to speak for
itself on the plea he so that the other could drink in the beauty for him-
self, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in itself which the camera
could not at all do justice to. But it was scarcely professional etiquette
so. Though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night now yet wonderfully cool
for the season considering, for sunshine after storm. And he did feel a kind
of need there and then to follow suit like a kind of inward voice and satis-
fy a possible need by moving a motion. Nevertheless he sat tight just view-
ing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the worse for
wear however, and looked away thoughtfully with the intention of not further
increasing the other's possible embarrassment while gauging her symmetry of
heaving embonpoint. In fact the slight soiling was only an added charm like
the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new, much better in fact with
the starch out. Suppose she was gone when he? I looked for the lamp which
she told me came into his mind but merely as a passing fancy of his because
he then recollected the morning littered bed etcetera and the book about
Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic) in it which must have fell down suffic-
iently appropriately beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies to
Lindley Murray.

The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated, distingue
and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the bunch though
you wouldn't think he had it in him yet you would. Besides he said the
picture was handsome which, say what you like, it was though at the mo-
ment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of makebe-
lieve went on about that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with
the usual splash page of gutterpress about the same old matrimonial tan-
gle alleging misconduct with professional golfer or the newest stage
favourite instead of being honest and aboveboard about the whole busi-
ness. How they were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up between
the two so that their names were coupled in the public eye was told in
court with letters containing the habitual mushy and compromising expres-
sions leaving no loophole to show that they openly cohabited two or three
times a week at some wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when the thing
ran its normal course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree nisi
and the King's proctor tries to show cause why and, he failing to quash it,
nisi was made absolute. But as for that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up
as they largely were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as
they very largely did till the matter was put in the hands of a solicitor
who filed a petition for the party wronged in due course. He, B, enjoyed
the distinction of being close to Erin's uncrowned king in the flesh when
the thing occurred on the historic fracas when the fallen leader's, who no-
toriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the mant-
le of adultery, (leader's) trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a dozen
or possibly even more than that penetrated into the printing works of the
Insuppressible or no it was United Ireland (a by no means by the by appro-
priate appellative) and broke up the typecases with hammers or something
like that all on account of some scurrilous effusions from the facile pens
of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation reflecting
on the erstwhile tribune's private morals. Though palpably a radically al-
tered man he was still a commanding figure though carelessly garbed as us-
ual with that look of settled purpose which went a long way with the shil-
lyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture that their
idol had feet of clay after placing him upon a pedestal which she, howev-
er, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot times in
the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from a nasty prod
of some chap's elbow in the crowd that of course congregated lodging some
place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a grave character.
His hat (Parnell's) a silk one was inadvertently knocked off and, as a mat-
ter of strict history, Bloom was the man who picked it up in the crush af-
ter witnessing the occurrence meaning to return it to him (and return it
to him he did with the utmost celerity) who panting and hatless and whose
thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time all the same being a
gentleman born with a stake in the country he, as a matter of fact, hav-
ing gone into it more for the kudos of the thing than anything else,
what'sbred in the bone instilled into him in infancy at his mother's knee
in the shape of knowing what good form was came out at once because he
turned round to the donor and thanked him with perfect Aplomb, saying:
Thank you, sir, though in a very different tone of voice from the orna-
ment of the legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights ea-
rlier in the course of the day, history repeating itself with a differ-
ence, after the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone
in his glory after the grim task of having committed his remains to the
grave.

On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes
of the cabman and so on who passed it all off as a jest, laughing immod-
erately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the wherefore,
and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case for the two
parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate husband happened
to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from the usual boy
Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial moment in a lov-
ing position locked in one another's arms, drawing attention to their
illicit proceedings and leading up to a domestic rumpus and the erring
fair one begging forgiveness of her lord and master upon her knees and
promising to sever the connection and not receive his visits any more if
only the aggrieved husband would overlook the matter and let bygones be
bygones with tears in her eyes though possibly with her tongue in her fair
cheek at the same time as quite possibly there were several others. He
personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed and didn't make the smal-
lest bones about saying so either that man or men in the plural were al-
ways hanging around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she
was the best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for
the sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired
of wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to
press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being that
her affections centred on another, the cause of many Liaisons between still
attractive married women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no
doubt as several famous cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt.

It was a thousand pities a young fellow, blessed with an allowance of
brains as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time with
profligate women who might present him with a nice dose to last him his
lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day take unto
himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the interim la-
dies' society was a Conditio sine qua non though he had the gravest pos-
sible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump Stephen about
Miss Ferguson (who was very possibly the particular lodestar who brought
him down to Irishtown so early in the morning), as to whether he would
find much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl courtship idea and the
company of smirking misses without a penny to their names bi or triweek-
ly with the orthodox preliminary canter of complimentplaying and walking
out leading up to fond lovers' ways and flowers and chocs. To think of
him house and homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than any stepmother,
was really too bad at his age. The queer suddenly things he popped out with
attracted the elder man who was several years the other's senior or like his
father but something substantial he certainly ought to eat even were it only
an eggflip made on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that, the
homely Humpty Dumpty boiled.

--At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired
though unwrinkled face.

--Some time yesterday, Stephen said.

--Yesterday! exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already tomorrow
Friday. Ah, you mean it's after twelve!

--The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself.

Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected. Though
they didn't see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there somehow
was as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one train
of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly some score of
years previously when he had been a quasi aspirant to parliamentary hon-
ours in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in retrospect (which
was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had a sneaking regard for
those same ultra ideas. For instance when the evicted tenants question, then
at its first inception, bulked largely in people's mind though, it goes with-
out saying, not contributing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its
dictums, some of which wouldn't exactly hold water, he at the outset in prin-
ciple at all events was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession as voic-
ing the trend of modern opinion (a partiality, however, which, realising his
mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of) and even was twitted with
going a step farther than Michael Davitt in the striking views he at one
time inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason he strongly res-
ented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion by our friend
at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan's so that he, though often
considerably misunderstood and the least pugnacious of mortals, be it re-
peated, departed from his customary habit to give him (metaphorically) one
in the gizzard though, so far as politics themselves were concerned, he
was only too conscious of the casualties invariably resulting from pro-
paganda and displays of mutual animosity and the misery and suffering
it entailed as a foregone conclusion on fine young fellows, chiefly,
destruction of the fittest, in a word.

Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it was,
it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was a bit
risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue (somebody
having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash altogether as on
the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed unknown) with a lame
paw (not that the cases were either identical or the reverse though he had
hurt his hand too) to Ontario Terrace as he very distinctly remembered,
having been there, so to speak. On the other hand it was altogether far and
away too late for the Sandymount or Sandycove suggestion so that he was in
some perplexity as to which of the two alternatives. Everything pointed to
the fact that it behoved him to avail himself to the full of the opportuni-
ty, allthings considered. His initial impression was he was a shade stand-
offish or not over effusive but it grew on him someway. For one thing he
mightn't what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly wor-
ried him was he didn't know how to lead up to it or word it exactly, suppo-
sing he did entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very great per-
sonal pleasure if he would allow him to help to put coin in his way or some
wardrobe, if found suitable. At all events he wound up by concluding, es-
chewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps's cocoa and a shake-
down for the night plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat doubled into a
pillow at least he would be in safe hands and as warm as a toast on a trivet
he failed to perceive any very vast amount of harm in that always with the
proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked up. A move had to be made because
that merry old soul, the grasswidower in question who appeared to be glued
to the spot, didn't appear in any particular hurry to wend his way home to
his dearly beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some sponger's bawd-
yhouse of retired beauties where age was no bar off Sheriff street lower
would be the best clue to that equivocal character's whereabouts for a
few days to come, alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids') with
sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to freeze
the marrow of anybody's bones and mauling their largesized charms between-
whiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment of large potations
of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for as to who he in reality
was let x equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra remarks Passim.
At the same time he inwardly chuckled over his gentle repartee to the blood
and ouns champion about his god being a jew. People could put up with being
bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The
most vulnerable point too of tender Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because
mostly they appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or some-
whereabouts in the county Sligo.

--I propose, our hero eventually suggested after mature reflection while
prudently pocketing her photo, as it's rather stuffy here you just come home
with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the vicinity.
You can't drink that stuff. Do you like cocoa? Wait. I'll just pay this lot.

The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain sailing,
he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the keeper of the shanty
who didn't seem to.

--Yes, that's the best, he assured Stephen to whom for the matter of that
Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less.

All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (B's) busy brain, ed-
ucation (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to
date billing, concert tours in English watering resorts packed with hydros
and seaside theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian with the accent
perfectly true to nature and a quantity of other things, no necessity, of
course, to tell the world and his wife from the housetops about it, and a
slice of luck. An opening was all was wanted. Because he more than suspect-
ed he had his father's voice to bank his hopes on which it was quite on the
cards he had so it would be just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the
conversation in the direction of that particular red herring just to.

The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former viceroy,
earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers' association dinner in London
somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling announce-
ment. Then the old specimen in the corner who appeared to have some spark
of vitality left read out that sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston for
the chief secretary's lodge or words to that effect. To which absorbing
piece of intelligence echo answered why.

--Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner
put in, manifesting some natural impatience.

--And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed.

The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles which
he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears.

--Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the townclerk
queried.

--Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly was a bit
of a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of seagreen portholes
as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading. Sand in the Red
Sea done that. One time I could read a book in the dark, manner of speaking.
The Arabian Nights Entertainment was my favourite and Red as a Rose is She.

Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what,
found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a
hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which time
(completely regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied loosen-
ing an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched him as
he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were suffic-
iently awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions, that
is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial re-
mark.

To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, was the first to
rise from his seat so as not to outstay their welcome having first and fore-
most, being as good as his word that he would foot the bill for the occas-
ion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine host as a
parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were not looking
to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making a grand total of
fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four coppers, literally
the last of the Mohicans), he having previously spotted on the printed price-
list for all who ran to read opposite him in unmistakable figures, coffee
2d, confectionery do, and honestly well worth twice the money once in a
way, as Wetherup used to remark.

--Come, he counselled to close the seance.

Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear they left the shel-
ter or shanty together and the elite society of oilskin and company
whom nothing short of an earthquake would move out of their Dolce far
niente. Stephen, who confessed to still feeling poorly and fagged out,
paused at the, for a moment, the door.

--One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of the
moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside
down, on the tables in cafes.

To which impromptu the neverfailing Bloom replied without a moment's hes-
itation, saying straight off:

--To sweep the floor in the morning.

So saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same time
apologetic to get on his companion's right, a habit of his, by the bye, his
right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The night air was
certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit weak on his pins.

--It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a
moment. The only thing is to walk then you'll feel a different man. Come.
It's not far. Lean on me.

Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen's right and led him on accord-
ingly.

--Yes, Stephen said uncertainly because he thought he felt a strange kind of
flesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly and all that.

Anyhow they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier etc. where the muni-
cipal supernumerary, ex Gumley, was still to all intents and purposes wrap-
ped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming of fresh fields
and pastures new. And apropos of coffin of stones the analogy was not at
all bad as it was in fact a stoning to death on the part of seventytwo out
of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the time of the split and chief-
ly the belauded peasant class, probably the selfsame evicted tenants he had
put in their holdings.

So they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art for which Bloom,
as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made tracks arm
in arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand
in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to follow at the first
go-off but the music of Mercadante's Huguenots, Meyerbeer's Seven Last
Words on the Cross and Mozart's Twelfth Mass he simply revelled in, the
Gloria in that being, to his mind, the acme of first class music as such,
literally knocking everything else into a cocked hat. He infinitely pre-
ferred the sacred music of the catholic church to anything the opposite
shop could offer in that line such as those Moody and Sankey hymns or Bid
me to live and I will live thy protestant to be. He also yielded to none
in his admiration of Rossini's Stabat Mater, a work simply abounding in
immortal numbers, in which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a
veritable sensation, he might safely say, greatly adding to her other la-
urels and putting the others totally in the shade, in the jesuit fathers'
church in upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the
doors to hear her with virtuosos, or virtuosi rather. There was the unani-
mous opinion that there was none to come up to her and suffice it to say
in a place of worship for music of a sacred character there was a general-
ly voiced desire for an encore. On the whole though favouring preferably
light opera of the Don Giovanni description and Martha, a gem in its line,
he had a Penchant, though with only a surface knowledge, for the severe
classical school such as Mendelssohn. And talking of that, taking it for
granted he knew all about the old favourites, he mentioned par excellence
Lionel's air in Martha, M'appari, which, curiously enough, he had heard or
overheard, to be more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appre-
ciated, from the lips of Stephen's respected father, sung to perfection,
a study of the number, in fact, which made all the others take a back seat.
Stephen, in reply to a politely put query, said he didn't sing it but lau-
nched out into praises of Shakespeare's songs, at least of in or about that
period, the lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter lane near Gerard the herb-
alist, who anno ludendo hausi, doulandus, an instrument he was contemplat-
ing purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom B. did not quite recall though
the name certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and
son with their dux and comes conceits and Byrd (William) who played the
virginals, he said, in the Queen's chapel or anywhere else he found them
and one Tomkins who made toys or airs and John Bull.

On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond
the swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground,
brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not
perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the allusion to sixtyfive
guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the political cel-
ebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical names, as a stri-
king coincidence.

By the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving,
Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual, plucked the other's
sleeve gently, jocosely remarking:

--Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller.

They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth
anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite
near so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh
because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a
taildangler, a headhanger putting his hind foot foremost the while the
lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. But such
a good poor brute he was sorry he hadn't a lump of sugar but, as he wisely
reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every emergency that might
crop up. He was just a big nervous foolish noodly kind of a horse, without
a second care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel
in Barney Kiernan's, of the same size, would be a holy horror to face. But it
was no animal's fault in particular if he was built that way like the camel,
ship of the desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of
them all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring
the bees. Whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator tickle the small of his
back and he sees the joke, chalk a circle for a rooster, tiger my eagle eye.
These timely reflections anent the brutes of the field occupied his mind
somewhat distracted from Stephen's words while the ship of the street was
manoeuvring and Stephen went on about the highly interesting old.

--What's this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated, plunging in
medias res, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your acquaintance
as she is passionately attached to music of any kind.

He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen, image
of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual handsome black-
guard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering after as
he was perhaps not that way built.

Still, supposing he had his father's gift as he more than suspected, it
opened up new vistas in his mind such as Lady Fingall's Irish industries,
concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in general.

Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air Youth here has End
by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows come
from. Even more he liked an old German song of Johannes jeep about the
clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, which bog-
gled Bloom a bit:

　　　　　　　　　　　　　Von der Sirenen listigkeit
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Tun die poeten dichten.

These opening bars he sang and translated Extempore. Bloom, nodding,
said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all means
which he did.

A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons, which
Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could easily, if pro-
perly handled by some recognised authority on voice production such as
Barraclough and being able to read music into the bargain, command its
own price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for its fortunate
possessor in the near future an entree into fashionable houses in the best
residential quarters of financial magnates in a large way of business and
titled people where with his university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its
way) and gentlemanly bearing to all the more influence the good impression
he would infallibly score a distinct success, being blessed with brains which
also could be utilised for the purpose and other requisites, if his clothes
were properly attended to so as to the better worm his way into their good
graces as he, a youthful tyro in society's sartorial niceties, hardly un-
derstood how a little thing like that could militate against you. It was in
fact only a matter of months and he could easily foresee him participating
in their musical and artistic conversaziones during the festivities of the
Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of
the fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of
which, as he happened to know, were on record --in fact, without giving the
show away, he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have.
Added to which of course would be the pecuniary emolument by no means to be
sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he parenthesised,
that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace the lyric
platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of time. But a step in the
required direction it was beyond yea or nay and both monetarily and mentally
it contained no reflection on his dignity in the smallest and it often turn-
ed in uncommonly handy to be handed a cheque at a muchneeded moment
when every little helped. Besides, though taste latterly had deteriorated to
a degree, original music like that, different from the conventional rut, would
rapidly have a great vogue as it would be a decided novelty for Dublin's
musical world after the usual hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted
on a confiding public by Ivan St Austell and Hilton St Just and their ge-
nus omne. Yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt he could with all the cards in
his hand and he had a capital opening to make a name for himself and win
a high place in the city's esteem where he could command a stiff figure
and, booking ahead, give a grand concert for the patrons of the King street
house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming to kick him upstairs, so
to speak, a big if, however, with some impetus of the goahead sort to obvi-
ate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped up a too much feted
prince of good fellows. And it need not detract from the other by one iota
as, being his own master, he would have heaps of time to practise literature
in his spare moments when desirous of so doing without its clashing with his
vocal career or containing anything derogatory whatsoever as it was a matter
for himself alone. In fact, he had the ball at his feet and that was the ve-
ry reason why the other, possessed of a remarkably sharp nose for smelling
a rat of any sort, hung on to him at all.

The horse was just then. And later on at a propitious opportunity he purpo-
sed (Bloom did), without anyway prying into his private affairs on the
fools step in where angels principle, advising him to sever his connection
with a certain budding practitioner who, he noticed, was prone to disparage
and even to a slight extent with some hilarious pretext when not present,
deprecate him, or whatever you like to call it which in Bloom's humble opi-
nion threw a nasty sidelight on that side of a person's character, no pun
intended.

The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted and,
rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting fall on
the floor which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three smoking
globes of turds. Slowly three times, one after another, from a full crup-
per he mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or she) had ended,
patient in his scythed car.

Side by side Bloom, profiting by the contretemps, with Stephen passed
through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and, stepping over
a strand of mire, went across towards Gardiner street lower, Stephen sing-
ing more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　Und alle schiffe brucken.

The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent, but merely watch-
ed the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black, one full,
one lean, walk towards the railway bridge, to be married by Father Maher.
As they walked they at times stopped and walked again continuing their
tete-a-tete (which, of course, he was utterly out of) about sirens enemies
of man's reason, mingled with a number of other topics of the same category,
usurpers, historical cases of the kind while the man in the sweeper car or
you might as well call it in the sleeper car who in any case couldn'tpossi-
bly hear because they were too far simply sat in his seat near the end of
lower Gardiner street and looked after their lowbacked car.

* * * * *

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