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 good 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 something 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 upon an expedient by suggesting the propriety of the cabman's shelter, as it was called, near Butt Bridge. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty devolved upon him he pondered ways and means during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was rather pale in the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to get a conveyance of some description in their then condition^|4, both of them being e.d. ed particularly Stephen,^4| always assuming that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly after a few such preliminaries as brushing they both walked together along Beaver street, or, more properly, lane, as far as the farrier's and the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of Montgomery street where they made tracks to the left, ^|4from^4| thence debouching into Amiens street round by
{u21, 678}
the corner of Dan Bergin's. But, as he fully anticipated, there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for hire anywhere to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows inside on the spree, outside the North Star Hotel, and there was no symptom of its budging an inch when Mr Bloom, who was anything but a ^|4loud professional^4| whistler, endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched over his head, twice.
{u22, 570}

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, ^|4which they shortly reached^4| they proceeded 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 adage, gone the way of all buttons though^|4, entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing,^4| he heroically made light of the mischance. So 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 happening to be returning 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 back door of the morgue (a not very enticing locality, not to say gruesome, 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, associated 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 city bakery, situated quite close to where
{u21, 679}
they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily bread, of all commodities of the public the primary 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 possession of his faculties, never more so, spoke a word of caution re the dangers of nighttown, 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. Highly providential was the appearance on the scene of Corny Kelleher when Stephen
{u22, 571}
was blissfully unconscious that, but for that man in the gap, the finis might have been 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. A lot of those policemen were admittedly unscrupulous 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, ^|4they the guardians of the law^4| were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they were paid to protect the upper classes. Another thing he commented on was equipping soldiers with arms of any kind, which was tantamount to inciting them against civilians. You frittered away your time, he very sensibly remarked, and health and also character besides which, fast women of the demimonde ran
{u21, 680}
away with a lot of £. s. d. into the bargain and the greatest danger of all was who you got drunk with. Most of all he commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen by all his pubhunting confrères but one, a most glaring piece of ratting under all the circs.

— And that one was Judas, said Stephen, who up to then had said nothing ^|4whatsoever^4| of any kind.

Discussing these and kindred topics they 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 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
{u22, 572}
him no small effort before he remembered that he recognised 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 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 delicacy, moved off, but nevertheless remained on the qui vive with just a shade of anxiety. Although unusual in Dublin he knew that it was not by any means unknown for desperadoes who had next to nothing to live on to be about waylaying and generally terrorising peaceable pedestrians ^|4by
{u21, 681}
placing a pistol at their head^4| in some secluded spot outside the city proper, famished loiterers they might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp with ^|4anything whatever^{4| |4}boodle they could^4| at a moment's notice, your money or your life.

Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters, though he was not in an over sober state himself, recognised Corly's breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corly, some called him, and his genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son of Inspector Corly of the G Division, lately deceased, who had married a certain Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His grandfather, Patrick Michael Corly, of New Ross, had married the widow of a publican there whose maiden name had been Katherine (also) Talbot. Rumour had it,though not proved, that she descended from the house of the Lords Talbot de Malahide, in whose mansion her mother or aunt or some relative 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 Corly.

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 other uncalled-for 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
{u22, 573}
mother in the washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir of the house, both occurrences happening at the same time. Anyhow, he was all in.

— I wouldn't ask you, only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and
{u21, 682}
God knows I'm on the rocks.

— There'll be a job tomorrow or the 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, Corly replied, sure I couldn't teach in a school, man. I was never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. Got stuck twice in the junior at the Christian Brothers.

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

Corly, 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 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 though he knew that Corly's brandnew rigmarole, on a par with the others, was hardly deserving of much credence. However, haud ignarus malorum miseris succurrere disco, etcetera, 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. But the cream of the joke was nothing would get it out of Corly'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 he found his money missing. A few broken biscuits were all. He tried his hardest to recollect for the moment whether he had lost, as well he might have, or left, because in that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much the reverse, in fact. He was altogether too
{u21, 683}
fagged out to institute a thorough search though
{u22, 574}
he tried to recollect. About biscuits he dimly remembered. Who now exactly gave them, or where was, or did he buy? However, in another pocket he came across what he surmised in the dark were pennies, erroneously, however.

— Those are halfcrowns, man, Corly corrected him.

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

— Thanks, Corly answered. You're a gentleman. I'll pay you back some time. Who's that with you? I saw him a few times 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.

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 Fulham's, the shipchandler's, bookkeeper there, that used to be often round in Nagle's back with O'Mara and a little chap with a stutter called Tighe. Anyhow, 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 watchman's sentrybox, who, evidently a glutton for work, it struck him, was having a quiet forty winks on his own private account while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the same time now and then at Stephen's ^|4anything but immaculately attired^4| interlocutor as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere or other. Being a person 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,
{u21, 684}
testifying to a chronic impecuniosity. Probably he was one of his hangers-on but for the matter of that it was merely a question of one preying on another all round, in every deep, so to put it, a deeper depth. In any case he had a consummate amount of assurance
{u22, 575}
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^|4,º with his practised eye,^4| was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he said, laughing, Stephen, that is:

— He's down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.

At this intelligence Mr Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a ^|4moment half a second^4| or so in the direction of Burgh Quay, whereupon he observed evasively:

— Everybody gets a certain 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, I guarantee he invariably does. Everyone according to his needs and everyone according to his deeds. Where 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 station. 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, Stephen replied.
{u21, 685}

— I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom remarked, today, in fact, or, to be strictly accurate, on yesterday. 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. He takes great pride, quite legitimately, out of you. You could go back, perhaps, he hazarded, still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when it
{u22, 576}
was perfectly evident that the other two, Mulligan, that is, and that English tourist friend of his were patently trying, as if the whole station belonged to them, to give Stephen the slip in the confusion⁽⁴, which they did⁴⁾.

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 family 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 oatmeal water for milk after the Friday herrings they had eaten at two a penny, with an egg apiece for Maggie 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.

— No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn't personally repose much trust in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher, and friend, if I were you. He knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he never realised 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
{u21, 686}
or some narcotic was put in your drink for some ulterior object.

He understood, however, from all he heard, that Dr Mulligan was a versatile allround man who was rapidly coming to the fore in his line ^|4and, if report was verified, bade fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future^4| in addition to which professional status his rescue of that man from certain drowning at Skerries, or Malahide was it?, was, he was bound to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed, so that he was utterly at a loss to fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except he put it down to jealousy.

— Except he is what they call picking your brains, he ventured to say.

The glance of half solicitude, half curiosity, augmented by friendliness which he gave at Stephen's at present morose expression of features
{u22, 577}
did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact, on the problem as to whether he had let himself be badly taken in, to judge by two or three remarks he let drop, or, on the other hand, 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, highly educated though he was, 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 were getting rid of voluble expressions in their language in a particularly animated way.

— Puttana madonna, che ci dia i quattrini! Ho ragione? Culo rotto!

— Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano più …

— Dice lui però!

— Farabutto! Mortacci sui!

Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman's shelter, an unpretentious
{u21, 687}
wooden 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 wouldn't vouch for the actual facts, which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. They took their seats in a discreet corner, only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous collection of waifs and strays already there engaged in eating and drinking, diversified by conversation for whom they seemingly formed an object of curiosity.

— Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom suggested, and something in the shape of solid food, say a roll of some sort.

He ordered these commodities quietly. The jarvies or stevedores, or whatever they were, turned their eyes, apparently dissatisfied, away, though one redbearded bibulous individual, a sailor, probably, still stared for some appreciable time before transferring his attention to the floor.

Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, ^|4he having just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute,º though^|a, to be sure,^a| rather in a quandary over voglio,^4| remarked to his protégé in an audible tone of voice,
{u22, 578}
à propos of the wrangle 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. Bella Donna. 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, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds it.

The keeper of the shelter put a boiling swimming cup of a concoction labelled coffee on the table and a rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed, after which he retreated to his counter, Mr Bloom determining to have a good ^|4square^4| look at him later on so as not to appear to, for which reason he encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes while surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was supposed to be called coffee gradually nearer him.

— Sounds are impostures, Stephen said. Like names. Cicero, Podmore. Napoleon, Mr Goodbody. Jesus, Mr Doyle. Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What's in a name?

— Of course, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed. Of course. Our name was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.

The redbearded sailor, who had his eye on the newcomers, boarded Stephen 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, answered:

— Dedalus.

The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy eyes.

— You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length.

— I've heard of him, Stephen said.
{u22, 579}

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

— He's Irish, the seaman 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
{u21, 689}
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 remark:

— 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 screwed his features up someway sideways and glared out into the night with an unprepossessing eye.

— Pom! he then shouted once.

The entire audience waited, anticipating a still further detonation, there being a ^|4second further^4| egg.

— Pom! he shouted twice.

A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness' sake just asked him whether it was for a marksmanship competition.

— Beg pardon, the sailor said.

— Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued.

— Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent, it might be a matter of ten years. He toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus. I seen him do that in Stockholm.

— Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively.

— Murphy's my name, the sailor continued, W.B. Murphy, of Carrigaloe. Know where that is?
{u22, 580}

— Queenstown Harbour, Stephen replied.
{u21, 690}

— That's right, the sailor said. 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 — homecoming to the mariner's roadside shieling — a rainy night with a blind moon. Quite a number of stories there were on that particular topic, Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a favourite and most trying declamation piece, by the way, of poor John Casey ^|4and a bit of perfect poetry in its way^4|. Never about the runaway wife coming back, however much devoted to him. The face at the window when the awful truth dawned upon him ^|4ab anent his better half^4|, wrecked 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, the publican of the Crown and Anchor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No chair for father. Broo! The wind! Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, post mortem child. With a high ro^|4!^4| and a randy ro^|4!^4| and my galloping tearing tandy O^|4.!^4| Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear it. I remain with much love your brokenhearted husband, W.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, do 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 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:
{u21, 691}

— 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? ^|4D.B. W.B.^4| Murphy. A.B.S.

In confirmation of his statement he extricated from an inside pocket and handed to his neighbour a not very clean looking folded document.
{u22, 581}

— 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. 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, said 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 printed matter on it stated: Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia.

All focussed their attention at 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 huts of osier.

— Chews coca all day long, the communicative sailor added^|v4, stomachs. Stomachs^v4| like breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can't bear no more children. See them ^|v4sitting^v4| there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse's liver raw.
{u21, 692}

His postcard proved a centre of attraction for several minutes, if not more.

— Know how to keep them off? he inquired genially.

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, Señor 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, having detected a discrepancy between his name, assuming he was the person he represented himself to be, and the fictitious addressee of the missive nevertheless it reminded him in a way of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise of travelling to London via long sea for he was at heart a born adventurer, though by a trick of fate he had consistently 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 hitch or other eternally cropped up with the net result that the scheme fell through. But even suppose it did come to planking down and breaking Boyd's heart it was not so dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at the outside, considering the fare to Mullingar ^|4where he figured on going^4| was five and six there and back. The trip would benefit health on account of the bracing ozone and be in every way thoroughly pleasurable seeing the different places along the route, Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so on, culminating in an instructive tour of the sights of the great metropolis,
{u21, 693}
^|4the spectacle of our^4| modern Babylon, tower, abbey, wealth of Park Lane, to renew acquaintance with. Another thing just struck him as by no means a bad notion was he might have a gaze around on the spot to see about trying to make arrangements about a concert tour embracing the chief pleasure resorts, Margate and so on^|4, B beautiful Bournemouth and similar bijou spots, which might prove highly remunerative^4|. Not, of course, with a hole and corner scratch company, 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, ^|4the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company as a sort of counterblast to the Elster Grimes and Moody-Manners,^4| perfectly simple matter, providing puffs in the local papers could be managed and thus combine business with pleasure.
{u22, 583}

Also it struck him a great field was to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes apropos of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which it was mooted was once more on the tapis in the circumlocution departments with the usual ^|4quantity of red tape and^4| 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 ^|4so forth Co^4|.

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 for a matter of a couple of paltry pounds, was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead of being always cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took me for a wife. After all, they had their eleven and more humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of venue in the summertime, for choice, when Dame Nature
{u21, 694}
is at her best, constituting nothing short of a new lease of life. There were delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation^|4, offering a plethora of attractions, as well as a bracing tonic for the system^4| in and around Dublin even, Poulaphouca, to which there was a steam tram, but also farther away from the madding crowd, in Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of Ireland, and in the wilds of Donegal ^|4where^4|, if report spoke true, ^|4the ^|~coup d'oeil coup d'œilº^~| was exceedingly grand,^4| though ^|4the lastnamed locality was^4| not easily getatable. 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.
{u22, 584}

— I seen a Chinese one time, related the 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 added, the Chinese does.

Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces, the globetrotter 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.
{u21, 695}

Whilst speaking he produced a dangerous looking 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 questions even should they by any chance want to.

— That's a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable knife.

After which harrowing tale 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 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 Bloom and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the strictly entre nous variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His inscrutable face, which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itself, conveyed the impression that he didn't understand one jot of what was going on. Funny, very.

There followed a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading by 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 concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well as yesterday, some score of years previously, in the days of the land troubles, when it took the civilised world
{u22, 585}
by storm, figuratively speaking, in eightyone when he was just turned fifteen.
{u21, 696}

— 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 asked.

The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay^|v4,^v4| 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 spurt a jet of spew into the sawdust, and shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.

— What year would that be about? Mr Bloom interpolated. Can you recall the boats?

Our ^|4|~soi-disant soi-disantº^~|4| sailor munched heavily awhile, hungrily, before answering.

— 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 likely 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. Suffice it to say that^|4, as a casual glance at the map revealed,^4| 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 derelict, seated habitually near the not particularly redolent sea on the wall, staring calmly at it and it at him, dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new. And it left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried to find out the secret for himself, floundering up and down and all that sort of thing and over and under — well, not exactly under — tempting the fates. And the odds were there was really no secret about it. Nevertheless the eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in all its glory and in the natural course of things somebody had to sail on it though it merely went to show how people usually contrived to load that sort
{u21, 697}
of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery and insurance were run on identically the same lines so that for that very reason, if no other, lifeboat Sunday was a very laudable institution to which the public at large, no matter where living, inland or seaside, having it brought home to them like that, should extend its
{u22, 586}
gratitude also to the harbourmasters and coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out ^|4amid the elements^4|, whatever the season, when duty called, and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, 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 ^|4Rover Rover^4|, the old seadog, himself a rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up a soft job as gentleman's valet 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 mother 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 cares of office, unwashed, of course, and in a seedy getup and a strong suspicion of nosepaint.

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

He 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 anchor.

— 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 object to. I hate those buggers. Sucks your blood dry, they does.

Seeing they were all looking at his chest, he accomodatingly
{u21, 698}
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 sideface looking frowningly rather.

— Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were lying becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton, ^|4the^4| best bloody man ever scuttled a ship. 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.
{u22, 587}

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 unaffected admiration of everybody, including Skin-the-Goat, who this time stretched over.

— 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 said.

— And what's the number for? ^|4another loafer number two^4| said.

— Eaten alive? a third.

— Ay, ay, sighed again the sailor, 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. 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^|4, palpablyº reconnoitring on her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill^4|. Mr Bloom turned away on the moment, flustered, 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 aside, 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 ^|4met had caught a fleeting glimpse of^4| that afternoon on Ormond Quay, the ^|4partially idiotic^4| 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 that he had washed his wife's undergarments when soiled in Holles street and women would and did too a man's similar garments if they really loved him, that is to say. Love me, love my dirty shirt. Still, just then 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
{u22, 588}
Evening Telegraph he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the side of the door with a kind of demented glassy grin ^|4showing that she was not exactly all there,^4| viewing with evident amusement the group of gazers round Skipper Murphy's 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.

Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely remarking:

— 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.
{u21, 700}

The elder man, though not by any manner of means a prude, said that it was nothing short of a crying scandal that women of that stamp, a necessary evil, were not licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a thing he could truthfully state he ⁽⁴as a paterfamias ⁴⁾ was a stalwart advocate of from the very start. Whoever embarked on a policy of the sort, he said, would confer a lasting boon on everybody concerned.

— You, as a good catholic, he subjoined, 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 believe in that myself because it has been explained by ⁽⁴competent men as⁴⁾ the convolutions of the brain. Otherwise we would never have such inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you?

Thus ⁽⁴asked cornered⁴⁾, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try to 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.
{u22, 589}

Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the mystical finesse involved was a bit beyond him.

— Simple, he demurred. 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 while. But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for instance to invent those rays Röntgen did, or the telescope like Edison, though I believe it was before his time, Galileo was the man I mean. The same applies to the laws, for example, of a far-reaching natural phenomenon such as electricity but it's a horse of quite another colour to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural God.
{u21, 701}

— 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 original point. I'm not so sure about that. That's a matter of every man's opinion and I beg to differ with you there. ⁽⁴Those It is my belief that those⁴⁾ bits were put in by monks most probably or it's a big question 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 replied.

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 lucrative) work. To be sure it 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 by qualified men for the lower orders. On the other hand, he had a distinct recollection they paid his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, ⁽⁴who had been prominently associated with it at one time,⁴⁾
{u22, 590}
a very modest remuneration indeed for her pianoplaying. The idea, 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 eatinghouse somewhere but he couldn't remember when it was or where. Anyhow,
{u21, 702}
inspection, medical inspection, of all eatables, seemed to him more than ever necessary.

— 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 it when taken up — by the handle and took a sip.

— Still, it's solid food, his good genius urged, I'm a stickler for solid food, his one and only reason being not gormandising but regular 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 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 very Roman or antique in it to the 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 Stephen 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 he said being strictly accurate.

He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him. Though a wellpreserved man ⁽⁴of no little stamina⁴⁾, if a trifle prone to baldness, there was something spurious in the cut of his
{u21, 703}
jib that suggested a jail delivery and it required no violent stretch of imagination to associate such a weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity.
{u22, 591}
He might even have done for his man, supposing it was his own case he told, as people often did about others, namely, that he killed him himself ⁽⁴and had served his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to say nothing of the Antonio personage who expiated his crimes in the manner described⁴⁾. On the other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable weakness, because meeting mugs, Dublin residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad, would tempt any ancient mariner 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 candle to the whoppers other fellows told 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 ⁽⁴if you paid them⁴⁾ because the muscles here, you see, he proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline, 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, there was nothing intrinsically incompatible about it, he conceded. On the contrary, that stab in the
{u21, 704}
back touch was quite ⁽⁴typical of in keeping with⁴⁾ those Italianos, though candidly he was free to admit those ice creamers and ⁽⁴fish friers friers in the fish way not to mention the chip potato persuasion⁴⁾ and so forth over in little Italy there, near the Coombe, were sober thrifty hardworking fellows except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless necessary ⁽⁴cat animal of the feline persuasion⁴⁾ of others at night so as to have a good old succulent meal 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 impetuous temperaments like
{u22, 592}
that are given to taking the law into their own hands and give you your quietus doublequick with those poignards they carry in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally. My wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half, that is. ⁽⁴Point of fact she could actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted having been born in (technically) Spain, i.e. Gibraltar.⁴⁾ She has the Spanish type. Quite dark, regular brunette, black. I, for one, certainly believe climate accounts for character. That's why I asked you if you wrote poetry in Italian.

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

— Quite so, Mr Bloom ⁽⁴agreed dittoed⁴⁾.

— 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 looking 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 I'm talking about the female form. Besides, they have so little taste in dress, most of them.
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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 beginning to flag somewhat all round and the others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog, collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. The sailor, 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 ⁽⁴the that illfated⁴⁾ 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, breakers running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore 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, and lost with all hands. 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 doze.

He walked heavily, slowly, ⁽⁴with a dumpy sort of a gait⁴⁾ to the door, stepped heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter and bore due left with a dumpy kind of a gait. 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 take one out and uncork it, or unscrew, and take a good old swig out of it. The irrepressible Bloom, who also
{u21, 706}
had a shrewd suspicion he went out on a manoeuvre after the ^|4female attraction counterattraction in the shape of a female^4|, who, however, had disappeared to all intents and purposes, could, by straining, just perceive him, when duly refreshed ^|4by his priv ^|apotations rum puncheon exploit^a|4|, gazing 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 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 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, who, though now broken down and fast breaking up, was none other in reality than the Gumley aforesaid 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 the arms
{u22, 594}
of Morpheus, a truly amazing piece of hard times in its most virulent form on a fellow most respectably connected and familiarised with decent home comforts all his life. And there he was at the end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably pink, without a penny to his name. 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 business if — a big if, however — he had contrived to cure himself of his partiality.

All, meantime, were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping, coastwise and foreign as well, which was 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.
{u21, 707}

There were wrecks and wrecks, the keeper said^|4, who was evidently au fait^4|. 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, 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. Anyhow in he rolled, boisterously trolling:

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

After which effusion ^|4he the redoubtableº specimen^4| arrived on the
{u22, 595}
scene and, regaining his seat, he sank rather than sat heavily on the form provided.

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 resources of Ireland, or something of that sort, which he described in his ^|4lengthy^4| dissertation as the richest country 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
{u21, 708}
surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation 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 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 with no uncertain voice — thoroughly monopolising all the conversation — 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 look in, 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 hero — a point his auditors at once seized as he showed the tendon 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 ^|4sailor impervious navigator^4| heard these lurid tidings undismayed.

— Take a bit of doing, boss, he retaliated.

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 interrogated. 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.
{u22, 596}

— 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 every man, 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,
{u21, 709}
needless to say, appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows.

From inside information Mr Bloom was rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion ^|4as egregious balderdash,^4| for, pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless they were ^|4much^4| bigger fools than he took them for, rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a par with the quixotic idea that in a hundred million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out and as a host of contingencies 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 ^|4interestingº^4| point, the amours of whores and chummies 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 ^|4of as being on all fours with^4| the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged, as the looker-on, 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 (Bloom) couldn't help feeling, and most properly, it was better to give people like that the goby and refuse to have anything to do with them in private life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a Dannyman turning Queen's evidence — or King's, now — like Denis Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that, he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet he certainly did feel, and no denying it, a certain
{u22, 597}
kind of admiration for a man who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his political opinions, on all fours with those love vendettas of the south — have her or swing for 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 £. s. d. round the docks in 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 person declared, I let slip. He called me a Jew, and in a heated 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.
{u21, 711}

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

— Of course, Mr Bloom 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
{u22, 598}
and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is, though every 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 violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on ^|4the due^4| instalments plan. It's a patent absurdity to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, so to speak.

— Memorable ^|4Bloody Bridge bloody bridge^4| battle ^|4and seven minutes' war^4|, Stephen assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market.

Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, that was overwhelmingly right and the whole world was overwhelmingly full of that sort of thing.

— You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of conflicting 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, erroneously 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 blank and spoke nearer to, so as the others blank in case they blank

— 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 had
{u21, 712}
much to answer for, imported them. Why? Because they are practical and are proved to be so. I don't want to indulge in any blank because 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 America. Turks. It's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they died 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 person I told you about at the outset and I want to see
{u22, 599}
everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes having a comfortable income, something in the neighbourhood of £300 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 learned a small smattering of in our classical days ⁽⁴in Alma Mater⁴⁾, 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 looked 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 possible 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
{u21, 714}
entitled to recoup yourself 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 laugh, that I may be important because I belong to Ireland.

— 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. 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.
{u22, 600}

At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked down, but in a quandary, not knowing exactly what construction to put on belongs to. The rebuke of some kind was clearer than the other part. Needless to say, the fumes of his recent orgy spoke then in a curious bitter way foreign to his sober state. Probably the home life, to which Mr Bloom attached the utmost importance, had not been all that was needful or he hadn't met 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, remembering he had just come back from Paris, failing to throw much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of premature decay, and nobody to blame but themselves. For instance, there was the case of O'Callaghan the half crazy faddist, respectably connected, though of inadequate means, with his mad vagaries, among whose other gay doings he was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual ⁽⁴denouement dénouement⁴⁾ he got landed into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends after a strong hint from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, under section two of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, certain names being handed in but not divulged, for reasons which will occur to anyone. 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 ⁽⁴occupant of the throne,⁴⁾ then heir apparent⁽⁴, the others simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state,⁴⁾ he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing Mrs Grundy 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 matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like distinctive underclothing should, and every
{u22, 601}
welltailored man must trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a ⁽⁴genuine⁴⁾ filip to acts of impropriety between the two she unbuttoned his and then he untied her mind the pin whereas savages at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a particular. However, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung. Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir.

For which and further reasons he ⁽⁴left feltº⁴⁾ it was his interest and duty even to wait on and profit by the unlooked for 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
{u21, 715}
acquaintance of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for talk would amply repay 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, night loafers, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in. To improve the shining hour he wondered 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 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 to A. Boudin, find the captain's age his eyes went aimlessly over the respective captions which came his special province, the allembracing give us this day our daily press. Great battle Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish £200 damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration Swindle. Ascot Throwaway recalls Derby of '92 when Captain 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.
{u22, 602}

So to change the subject he read about Dignam, R.I.P., which, he reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff.

— This morning (Hynes put it in, of course), the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, ⁽⁴No. n°⁴⁾ 9 Newbridge Avenue, Sandymount, for interment in Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a most popular and genial personality in city life and his demise, after a brief illness, 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 present, were carried out by (certainly Hynes wrote it with a nudge from Corny) Messrs. H.J. O'Neill & Son, 164 North Strand Road. The mourners included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan (brother-in-law), Jno. Henry Menton, solr, Martin Cunningham, John Power ⁽⁴ .)eatondph eatondph⁴⁾ 1/8 ador dorador douradora (must be where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad) Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus, Stephen Dedalus, B.A., Edward J. Lambert, Cornelius Kelleher, Joseph M'C. Hynes, L. Boom, C.P. M'Coy, — Mackintosh, and several others.

Nettled not a little by L. Boom ⁽⁴(as it incorrectly stated)⁴⁾ and the line of bitched type, but amused simultaneously by C.P. M'Coy and Stephen Dedalus, B.A., who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their absence, L. Boom pointed it out to his companion, B.A., engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness⁽⁴, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical misprints⁴⁾.

— 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, overjoyed to set his mind at rest and a bit flabbergasted at Myles Crawford's after all managing ⁽⁴it. the thing,^{4) (4}There there⁴⁾.

While the other was reading it on page two Boom whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and starts with the account of the race on page three, his side. Value 1,000 sovs., with 3,000 sovs. in specie added. For entire colts and fillies. Throwaway, by Rightaway-Theale (W. Lane) 1. Lord Howard de Walden's Zinfandel (M. Cannon) 2. Mr W. Bass's Sceptre 3. Betting 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway (off). Throwaway and Zinfandel stood close order, then drew to
{u21, 717}
the fore. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. ⁽⁴1000 1,000⁴⁾ sovs. with 300 in specie. Also ran J. de Bremond's (French horse Bantam Lyons was inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) Maximum II. Winner trained by Braime. 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.

— 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, Return 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 ⁽⁴No. n°⁴⁾ 15. Then they would have gone down on their marrowbones to him to come back. Dead he wasn't. The coffin they brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and so on.

All the same Bloom was rather surprised at their memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tar-barrels, 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 pneumonia ⁽⁴just when his various political arrangements were
{u21, 718}
nearing completion⁴⁾ or whether it transpired he owed his death to ⁽⁴his having neglected to change his boots and clothes after a wetting when a cold resulted he being confined to his room till he eventually died of it,⁴⁾ or the job was taken out of their hands. Of course, nobody being acquainted with his movements, even before, there was absolutely no clue to his whereabouts, so the
{u22, 604}
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 ⁽⁴a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stocking feet ⁴⁾ whereas Messrs So-and-So who 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 ⁽⁴rôle rôle⁴⁾ how to. He saw him once ⁽⁴on the auspicious occasion⁴⁾ when they broke up the type in 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 expression: what's bred in the bone. Still, as regards return, you were a lucky dog if they didn't set the terrier at you ⁽⁴directly you got back⁴⁾. Then a lot of shillyshally usually followed, 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 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
{u21, 719}
easily have picked up the details from some pal on board ship and then 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 discussion 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 ⁽⁴soi-disant soi-disant⁴⁾ town-clerk, Henry Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. I seen her picture in a shop. Her husband was a captain or an officer.

— Ay, Skin-the-Goat ⁽⁴amusingly subjoined⁴⁾. He was, and a cottonball one.

This occasioned a fair amount of laughter among his entourage. As regards Bloom, he reflected
{u22, 605}
upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary interest 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 an attachment sprang up between them, ⁽⁴till itº bit by bit became the talk of the town⁴⁾ till the staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not a few ⁽⁴evildisposed⁴⁾, however, who were resolved upon encouraging his downfall though the thing was public property. Since their names were coupled, though, ⁽⁴since he was her declared favouriteº,⁴⁾ where was the necessity to proclaim it from the housetops, the fact, namely, that he had shared her bedroom, which came out in the witnessbox in the shape of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel a fact that the weeklies, addicted to the lubric a little, coined money out of. Whereas it was simply a case of the husband not being up to much with nothing in common between them beyond the name, and then a real man on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her charms and forgetting home ties. The usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's smiles. The eternal question, needless to say, cropped up. Can real love exist between married folk? Though it was no concern of theirs absolutely if he regarded her with affection, carried away by a wave of folly. A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly, augmented by gifts of a high order as compared with the other military supernumerary, that is, which she of course, woman, quickly perceived as likely to carve his way to fame, which he almost did till the priests and ⁽⁴the his beloved⁴⁾ evicted tenants ⁽⁴for whom he had done yeoman service⁴⁾ in the rural parts of the country very effectually cooked his ⁽⁴matrimonial⁴⁾ goose. 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, Irishtown Strand, a locality he had not been in for quite a number of years, looked different somehow since, as it happened, he went to live on the north side. North or south, however, it was just a case of hot passion, pure and simple, and just bore out what he was saying, as she also was Spanish or half so, types that wouldn't do things by halves, passionate abandon
{u21, 721}
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. And if I don't greatly mistake, she was Spanish too.

— The King of Spain's daughter, Stephen answered.

— Was she? Bloom said, 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 he took out his pocketbook and, turning over the contents 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 charms on evidence in an open fashion, as she was in the full bloom of womanhood, in evening dress cut ⁽⁴ostentatiously⁴⁾ low ⁽⁴for the occasion⁴⁾ to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than visions 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 and Son, Dublin.

— ⁽⁴My wife Mrs Bloom, my wife the prima donnaº ⁴⁾, Bloom indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about '96. Very like her then.
{u22, 607}

Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his ⁽⁴legal⁴⁾ wife ⁽⁴who, 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
{u21, 722}
her years numbered barely sixteen⁴⁾. As for the face, it was a speaking likeness in expression but it did not do justice to her figure, ⁽⁴which came in for a lot of notice usually and⁴⁾ which did not come out to the best advantage in that get-up. She could without difficulty, he said, have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent curves of the. He dwelt on ⁽⁴general development (of females) the female form in general developmentally⁴⁾ because, as it happened, no later than that afternoon, he had seen those Grecian statues, perfectly developed, in the National Museum. Marble could give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry. All the rest, yes, puritanism. It does though, St. Joseph's sovereign blank 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 ⁽⁴for a very few minutes to speak for itself⁴⁾ on the plea he ⁽⁴so that the other could drink in the beauty for himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in itself ⁴⁾. But it was scarcely etiquette so, though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night now ⁽⁴yet wonderfully cool for the season considering,⁴⁾ for sunshine after storm. And he did feel a kind of need there and then to satisfy a need. Nevertheless, he sat tight, just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the worse for wear, however, and looked away thoughtfully. 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 then he recollected the morning littered bed etcetera⁽⁴, and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic) in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately beside the chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray⁴⁾.
{u21, 723}

The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated, ⁽⁴distingué distingué⁴⁾, 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
{u22, 608}
picture was handsome which, say what you like, it was, though at the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of makebelieve went on about that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with the usual splash page of letterpress. 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 compromising expressions, leaving no loophole, to show that they cohabited and relations, when the thing ran its normal course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree nisi and the King's Proctor trial to show cause why and nisi was made absolute. But as for that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as they very largely did. He, Bloom, enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin's uncrowned king ⁽⁴when the thing occurred⁴⁾ on the historic ⁽⁴fracas fracas⁴⁾ when the fallen leader's — who notoriously stuck to his guns to the last ⁽⁴drop⁴⁾ — trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a dozen⁽⁴,⁴⁾ penetrated into the printing works of United Ireland (a by no means, by the way appropriate appellative) and broke up the typecases with hammers or something all on account of some scurrilous effusions from the ^|4practised facile^4| pens of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation, reflecting on the erstwhile tribune's private morals. Though palpably a radically altered man, he was still a commanding figure, though carelessly garbed as usual, with that look of settled purpose which went a long way with the shillyshallyers till
{u21, 724}
they discovered to their discomfiture that their idol had feet of clay, which she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from ^|4the a nasty^4| prod of some chap's elbow lodging in the stomach, fortunately not of a grave character. His hat (Parnell's) was inadvertently knocked off and^|4, as a matter of history,^4| Bloom was the man who picked it up in the crush and returned it to him with the utmost
{u22, 609}
celerity who, panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time, being a gentleman born with a stake in the country, what's bred in the bone, instilled into him in infancy came out at once because he turned round to the donor and thanked him ^|4with perfect aplomb^4|, saying: Thank you, sir, though in a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights, history repeating itself with a difference, after the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone in his glory.

On the other hand, what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes of the cabman and so on, who passed it off as a jest, pretending to understand everything, the why and the wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own mind. He personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed, and made no bones about saying so either, that man, or men in the plural, were always hanging around about a lady when she chose to be tired of wedded life, 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 and younger men, no doubt.

It was a thousand pities a young fellow blessed with brains, as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time with profligate women. In
{u22, 610}
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 ladies' society was a conditio sine qua non though he had the gravest possible doubts as to whether he would find much satisfaction basking in the company of smirking misses bi- or tri-weekly, with the orthodox preliminary canter of compliment paying 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, were it only ^|4an eggflip made on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that,^4| the homely Humpty Dumpty boiled.

— At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired though unwrinkled face.
{u21, 726}

— 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.

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 ^|4roughly some score of years previously^4| he too recollected in retrospect (which was a source of satisfaction in itself) he had a sneaking ^|4regard^4| for those same ultra ideas. For instance, when the evicted tenants question^|4, then at its first inception,^4| bulked largely in people's mind though not contributing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, he in principle, at all events, was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession, ^|4as voicing the trend of modern opinion,^4|a partiality, however, he was subsequently partially cured of, and even was twitted with going a step further than Michael Davitt in the views he inculcated, which was one reason he strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion
{u22, 611}
at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan's so that he, ^|4though ^|aoften^a| considerably misunderstood and^4| the least pugnacious of mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to give him metaphorically one in the gizzard though, so far as politics were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of 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 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. On the other hand it was altogether 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 opportunity, all things considered. His initial impression was he was a shade standoffish 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 worried him was he didn't know how to lead up to it or word it exactly, supposing he did entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very great personal 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, eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps's cocoa and a shakedown for the night ^|4with plus the use of^4| a rug or two and overcoat doubled into a pillow. At least he would be in safe hands and as warm as a toast. He failed to perceive any very vast amount of harm in 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, 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 bawdyhouse of retired beauties 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 six chamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical and mauling their largesized charms between whiles with rough and tumble gusto
{u22, 612}
to the accompaniment of the usual blarney about himself for as to who he really was let X equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra remarks. At the same time he inwardly chuckled over his repartee to the blood and ouns
{u21, 728}
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 somewhereabouts in the county Sligo.

— I propose, he eventually suggested, after mature reflection, while prudently pocketing her photo, you just come home with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the vicinity. You can't drink that stuff. 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 it was all more or less.

All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (Bloom's) brain. Education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to date billing, hydros and concert tours in English watering resorts packed with theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian with the accent perfectly true to nature, 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 suspected he had his father's voice so it would be just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the conversation in that direction just to.

The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdriver's association dinner in London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner read out that Sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary's lodge ^|4or words to that effect^4|. To which ^|4absorbingº piece of intelligence^4| echo answered why.

— Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner put in, manifesting some impatience.
{u21, 729}

— And welcome, answered the ^|4old elderly^4| party thus addressed.
{u22, 613}

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, 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.

Thereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what, during which time the keeper was intensely occupied loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched him, as he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions, either simply looking on or passing a trivial remark.

Bloom was the first to rise from his seat having first and foremost taken the wise precaution to motion to mine host a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were not looking, to the effect that the amount due as forthcoming, making a grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans), he having previously seen on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him in unmistakable figures, coffee 2d, confectionery do. and honestly ^|4well^4| worth ^|4twice^4| the money.

— Come, he counselled, to close the séance.

Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear, they left the shelter or shanty together and the élite society of oilskin and company
{u21, 730}
. 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 on the tables in cafés.
{u22, 614}

To which impromptu the neverfailing Bloom replied without a moment's hesitation, 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. 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. It's not far. Lean on me.

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

— Yes, Stephen said uncertainly, because he thought he felt a strange kind of flesh approach him, sinewless and wobbly and all that. Anyhow, they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier, etc where the municipal supernumerary, ex Gumley, was still to all intents and purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as ^|4they say the adage has it^|a, dreaming of fresh fields and pastures new^a|4|. And apropos of coffin of stones, the analogy was not 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 chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings.

So they passed on to chatting about music, a form of art for which Bloom^|4, as a pure amateur,^4| 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 but the music of Mercadante's Huguenots, Meyerbeer's Seven Last Words on the Cross, and Mozart's Twelfth Mass, the Gloria in that being to his mind the acme of ^|4musical expression first class music^4|. 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 even say, putting the others totally in the
{u22, 615}
shade, in the jesuit fathers' church in upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to hear her with virtuosos, or virtuosi rather. There was the unanimous 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 generally 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 Lionel's air in Martha, M'appari, which, curiously enough, he heard, or overheard, to be more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the lips of Stephen's respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the number, in fact. Stephen, in reply to a politely put query, said he didn't but launched 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 herbalist, who anno ludendo hausi, Doulandus, an instrument he was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom Bloom 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
{u21, 732}
them and one Tomkins who made toys or airs, and John Bull.

On the roadway which they were approaching ^|4whilst still speaking^4| 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 celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical names, as a striking coincidence.

By the chains, the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving, Bloom 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 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 taildangler, a headhanger, putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord of his creation
{u22, 616}
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 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 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.

— My wife, he intimated,
{u21, 733}
would be very much interested to make 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 blackguard type they ^|4unquestionably^4| had an indubitable 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^|4., which boggled Bloom a bit:^4|

Von der Sirenen Listigkeit
Tun die Poeten dichten.

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

A phenomenally beautiful voice like that, the rarest of boons, which Bloom appreciated at the first note he got out, could easily^|4, if properly
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handled,^4| command its own price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for its fortunate possessor in the near future an ^|~4entrée entréeº^~|4| into fashionable houses in the best residential ^|4squares quarters^4| of financial magnates in a large way of business and titled people where, with his university degree of B.A. and gentlemanly bearing, he would infallibly score a distinct success 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 niceties, hardly understood how a little thing
{u21, 734}
like that could militate against you. He could easily foresee him at their musical and artistic conversaziones 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. Added to which, of course, would be the pecuniary emolument ^|4by no means to be sneezed at^4|. 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 turned 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. Yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he could, with all the cards in his hand, make a name for himself and win a high place in the city's esteem and, booking ahead, give a grand concert ^|4in for the patrons of^4| the King street house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming, — a big if, however — with some impetus of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped up a too much fêted prince of good fellows, and it need not detract from the
{u22, 618}
other in the least as he could, being his own master, practise literature in his spare moments when desirous of so doing ^|4without its clashing with his vocal career^4|. In fact, he had the ball at his feet.
{u21, 735}

The horse was just then, and later on, at a propitious opportunity he purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying into his private affairs, 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 opinion, 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 crupper, 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 singing more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad:

Und alle Schiffe brücken.

The driver never said a word. He merely watched the two figures, both black — one full, one lean — walk towards the railway bridge. As they walked, they at times stopped and walked again, continuing their ^|~4tête à tête tête à têteº^~|4| (which of course he was well out of), about sirens, enemies of man's reason, and a number of other topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind.