No More Learning

Yes, Pious had told him of that land and
Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way he
fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she
said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true
path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn
aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so
flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named Two-in-the-Bush
or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence.

This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse
of Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this whore
Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a
wicked devil) they would strain the last but they would make at her and
know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else
but notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first,
Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and
in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words
printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by
Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they
cared not for them for Preservative had given them a stout shield of
oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring
that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield which was
named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr
Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon,
Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company,
were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a
very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm up and
spill their souls for their abuses and their spillings done by them
contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth.

So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and
after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a
fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields
athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too.
Hard to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle
this long while back as no man remembered to be without. The rosy buds
all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flag
and faggots that would catch at first fire. All the world saying, for
aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the
land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and
by, as said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in the
west, biggish swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and the
weatherwise poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first and
after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder and
in a brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking
shower, the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or
kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the
pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through
Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water flowing that was
before bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre seen about but
no more crack after that first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice
Fitzgibbon's door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the
college lands) Mal. Mulligan a gentleman's gentleman that had but come
from Mr Moore's the writer's (that was a papish but is now, folk say,
a good Williamite) chanced against Alec. Bannon in a cut bob (which are
now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green) that was new got to town from
Mullingar with the stage where his coz and Mal M's brother will stay a
month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in the earth he does there,
he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's being stayed for to crush a cup
of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a skittish heifer, big of
her age and beef to the heel, and all this while poured with rain and
so both together on to Horne's. There Leop. Bloom of Crawford's journal
sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon jun. ,
scholar of my lady of Mercy's, Vin. Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will. Madden,
T. Lenehan, very sad about a racer he fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Bloom
there for a languor he had but was now better, be having dreamed tonight
a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red slippers on in a pair of
Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken to be for a change and
Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through pleading her belly, and now
on the stools, poor body, two days past her term, the midwives sore put
to it and can't deliver, she queasy for a bowl of riceslop that is a
shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath very heavy more than good
and should be a bullyboy from the knocks, they say, but God give her
soon issue. 'Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear, and Lady day bit off
her last chick's nails that was then a twelvemonth and with other three
all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand in the king's bible.
Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the sacrament and is to
be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys off Bullock harbour
dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in a punt he has
trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear. In sum
an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and will much increase
the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and water fire shall come
for a prognostication of Malachi's almanac (and I hear that Mr Russell
has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out of the Hindustanish
for his farmer's gazette) to have three things in all but this a mere
fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet sometimes
they are found in the right guess with their queerities no telling how.

With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the letter
was in that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him
(for he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but on
Stephen's persuasion he gave over the search and was bidden to sit near
by which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman that
went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of women,
horseflesh or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he was mean
in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses
and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners,
flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the
game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights
till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose
gossip. He took his ordinary at a boilingcook's and if he had but gotten
into him a mess of broken victuals or a platter of tripes with a bare
tester in his purse he could always bring himself off with his tongue,
some randy quip he had from a punk or whatnot that every mother's son of
them would burst their sides. The other, Costello that is, hearing this
talk asked was it poetry or a tale. Faith, no, he says, Frank (that was
his name), 'tis all about Kerry cows that are to be butchered along of
the plague. But they can go hang, says he with a wink, for me with their
bully beef, a pox on it. There's as good fish in this tin as ever came
out of it and very friendly he offered to take of some salty sprats that
stood by which he had eyed wishly in the meantime and found the place
which was indeed the chief design of his embassy as he was sharpset.
_Mort aux vaches_, says Frank then in the French language that had been
indentured to a brandyshipper that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he
spoke French like a gentleman too. From a child this Frank had been
a donought that his father, a headborough, who could ill keep him to
school to learn his letters and the use of the globes, matriculated at
the university to study the mechanics but he took the bit between his
teeth like a raw colt and was more familiar with the justiciary and the
parish beadle than with his volumes. One time he would be a playactor,
then a sutler or a welsher, then nought would keep him from the bearpit
and the cocking main, then he was for the ocean sea or to hoof it on
the roads with the romany folk, kidnapping a squire's heir by favour of
moonlight or fecking maids' linen or choking chicken behind a hedge. He
had been off as many times as a cat has lives and back again with naked
pockets as many more to his father the headborough who shed a pint
of tears as often as he saw him. What, says Mr Leopold with his hands
across, that was earnest to know the drift of it, will they slaughter
all? I protest I saw them but this day morning going to the Liverpool
boats, says he. I can scarce believe 'tis so bad, says he. And he had
experience of the like brood beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and
wether wool, having been some years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe,
a worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock and meadow
auctions hard by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. I question with
you there, says he. More like 'tis the hoose or the timber tongue. Mr
Stephen, a little moved but very handsomely told him no such matter and
that he had dispatches from the emperor's chief tailtickler thanking
him for the hospitality, that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, the
bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two of physic to
take the bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing.
He'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a
bull that's Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature, says Mr
Stephen, and he sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an English
chinashop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was
sent to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattlebreeder of them
all, with an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr Vincent
cross the table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a plumper
and a portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns
galore, a coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out of
his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and
rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains.
What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas
that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who
were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my
cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer's blessing, and
with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the
blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him
a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to
this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper
in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his
long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in
the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word: And they
dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet and
girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him
all over with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of
the road with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market
so that he could doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the
father of the faithful (for so they called him) was grown so heavy that
he could scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and
damsels brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon as his
belly was full he would rear up on his hind uarters to show their
ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bulls' language
and they all after him. Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he
would suffer nought to grow in all the land but green grass for himself
(for that was the only colour to his mind) and there was a board put up
on a hillock in the middle of the island with a printed notice, saying:
By the Lord Harry, Green is the grass that grows on the ground. And,
says Mr Dixon, if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or
the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much
as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he'd run amok over half
the countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all
by lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says
Mr Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks
in the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house
and I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell
hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But
one evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal
pelt to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for
himself but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row
with pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull
and on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry
he found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous
champion bull of the Romans, _Bos Bovum_, which is good bog Latin for
boss of the show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his
head into a cow's drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers
and pulling it out again told them all his new name. Then, with the
water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had
belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls' language
to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first personal
pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if ever he went
out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write it upon what
took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of
cotton or a corkfloat. In short, he and the bull of Ireland were soon as
fast friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr Stephen, and
the end was that the men of the island seeing no help was toward, as
the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded
themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts
erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread three
sheets in the wind, put her head between wind and water, weighed anchor,
ported her helm, ran up the jolly Roger, gave three times three, let the
bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea to recover
the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the
composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty:

_--Pope Peter's but a pissabed.
A man's a man for a' that. _

Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway
as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend
whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon,
who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a
cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil
enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a
project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched
on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards
which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend
printed in fair italics: _Mr Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and Incubator.
Lambay Island_. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw
from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir
Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself
to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well,
let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it
smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap sitting as
standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiating upon
his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by
a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the
prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to conjugal
vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether the
prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities
acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch
defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable
females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest bonzes, who hide their
flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly
bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might
multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of
their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he
assured them, made his heart weep. To curb this inconvenient (which
he concluded due to a suppression of latent heat), having advised with
certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter, he had
resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay
island from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of
note much in favour with our ascendancy party. He proposed to set up
there a national fertilising farm to be named _Omphalos_ with an obelisk
hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful
yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life
soever who should there direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the
functions of her natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he
take a penny for his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the
opulent lady of fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers
were warm persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man.
For his nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a
diet of savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these
latter prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both
broiled and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum
chillies. After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of
asseveration Mr Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with
which he had shielded it. They both, it seems, had been overtaken by the
rain and for all their mending their pace had taken water, as might be
observed by Mr Mulligan's smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now
somewhat piebald. His project meanwhile was very favourably entertained
by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of
Mary's excepted to it, asking with a finicking air did he purpose also
to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made court to the
scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics which, as it dwelt
upon his memory, seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of his
contention: _Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites,
ut matresfamiliarum nostrae lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici
titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis erectionibus
centurionum Romanorum magnopere anteponunt_, while for those of ruder
wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more
suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest glade, the
farmyard drake and duck.

Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper
man of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with
animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics
while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had
advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a
passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his
nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom
were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him
a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional
assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very
heartily, though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he was
come there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne's house, that was in an
interesting condition, poor body, from woman's woe (and here he fetched
a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr Dixon,
to turn the table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether
his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an
ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due,
as with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach.
For answer Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote
himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll
mimic of Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though
'tis pity she's a trollop): There's a belly that never bore a bastard.
This was so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and threw
the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight. The spry
rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the
antechamber.

Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch student, a little
fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion
with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient
point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the
obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by
a questioning poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had
not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but
contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was ever
done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. _Mais bien sur_,
noble stranger, said he cheerily, _et mille compliments_. That you may
and very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my
felicity. But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in my wallet
and a cupful of water from the well, my God, I would accept of them and
find it in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and give thanks to
the powers above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver of good
things. With these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took a
complacent draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening his
bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very
picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein.
Gazing upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he
said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting
instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her
feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so
melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been
impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of
such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never so
touched in all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days!
Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her
favours. A sigh of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having
replaced the locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again.
Beneficent Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great
and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in
thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb,
the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer
years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and
imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in
anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my
cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured
seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me,
he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and,
thousand thunders, I know of a _marchand de capotes_, Monsieur Poyntz,
from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion
as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, tut! cries Le Fecondateur,
tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller
(I have just cracked a half bottle AVEC LUI in a circle of the best wits
of the town), is my authority that in Cape Horn, _ventre biche_, they
have a rain that will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak. A
drenching of that violence, he tells me, _sans blague_, has sent more
than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another world.
Pooh! A _livre! _ cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things are dear at a
sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten
such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would wear one. My dear Kitty told me
today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she would starve in
such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me (blushing piquantly and
whispering in my ear though there was none to snap her words but giddy
butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing, has implanted it in
our hearts and it has become a household word that _il y a deux choses_
for which the innocence of our original garb, in other circumstances a
breach of the proprieties, is the fittest, nay, the only garment. The
first, said she (and here my pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her
tilbury, to fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer
chamber of my ear), the first is a bath. . . But at this point a bell
tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for
the enrichment of our store of knowledge.

Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and, while
all were conjecturing what might be the cause, Miss Callan entered and,
having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with
a profound bow to the company. The presence even for a moment among a
party of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and
not less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of
the most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of
ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled.
A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh! I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused
you. What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud, immensely
so, said Mr Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater
hospice. Demme, does not Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns there under the
chin. As I look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid
there any time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young
blood in the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and with immodest
squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body! Drat the man! Bless
me, I'm all of a wibbly wobbly. Why, you're as bad as dear little Father
Cantekissem, that you are! May this pot of four half choke me, cried
Costello, if she aint in the family way. I knows a lady what's got a
white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young surgeon, however,
rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as the nurse had just
then informed him that he was needed in the ward. Merciful providence
had been pleased to put a period to the sufferings of the lady who was
_enceinte_ which she had borne with a laudable fortitude and she had
given birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience, said he, with those
who, without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling
profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest
power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if
need were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of
her noble exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a
glorious incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What?
Malign such an one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of
her own sex and the astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most
momentous that can befall a puny child of clay? Perish the thought! I
shudder to think of the future of a race where the seeds of such malice
have been sown and where no right reverence is rendered to mother and
maid in house of Horne. Having delivered himself of this rebuke he
saluted those present on the by and repaired to the door. A murmur
of approval arose from all and some were for ejecting the low soaker
without more ado, a design which would have been effected nor would
he have received more than his bare deserts had he not abridged his
transgression by affirming with a horrid imprecation (for he swore a
round hand) that he was as good a son of the true fold as ever drew
breath. Stap my vitals, said he, them was always the sentiments of
honest Frank Costello which I was bred up most particular to honour thy
father and thy mother that had the best hand to a rolypoly or a hasty
pudding as you ever see what I always looks back on with a loving heart.

To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of
some impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits
of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not
pity. The young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies
as overgrown children: the words of their tumultuary discussions
were difficultly understood and not often nice: their testiness and
outrageous _mots_ were such that his intellects resiled from: nor were
they scrupulously sensible of the proprieties though their fund of
strong animal spirits spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr Costello
was an unwelcome language for him for he nauseated the wretch that
seemed to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born out
of wedlock and thrust like a crookback toothed and feet first into the
world, which the dint of the surgeon's pliers in his skull lent indeed
a colour to, so as to put him in thought of that missing link of
creation's chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was now
for more than the middle span of our allotted years that he had passed
through the thousand vicissitudes of existence and, being of a wary
ascendancy and self a man of rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart
to repress all motions of a rising choler and, by intercepting them
with the readiest precaution, foster within his breast that plenitude
of sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash judgers scorn and all find
tolerable and but tolerable. To those who create themselves wits at the
cost of feminine delicacy (a habit of mind which he never did hold
with) to them he would concede neither to bear the name nor to herit
the tradition of a proper breeding: while for such that, having lost
all forbearance, can lose no more, there remained the sharp antidote of
experience to cause their insolency to beat a precipitate and inglorious
retreat. Not but what he could feel with mettlesome youth which, caring
nought for the mows of dotards or the gruntlings of the severe, is ever
(as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer expresses it) for eating of the
tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to pretermit humanity upon any
condition soever towards a gentlewoman when she was about her lawful
occasions. To conclude, while from the sister's words he had reckoned
upon a speedy delivery he was, however, it must be owned, not a little
alleviated by the intelligence that the issue so auspicated after an
ordeal of such duress now testified once more to the mercy as well as to
the bounty of the Supreme Being.

Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express
his notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance to express
one) was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid genius not
to be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her confinement
since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers. The dressy
young blade said it was her husband's that put her in that expectation
or at least it ought to be unless she were another Ephesian matron. I
must acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table so as to
evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round
again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his
nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I
bade him hold himself in readiness for that the event would burst anon.
'Slife, I'll be round with you. I cannot but extol the virile potency of
the old bucko that could still knock another child out of her. All fell
to praising of it, each after his own fashion, though the same young
blade held with his former view that another than her conjugial had
been the man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a linkboy (virtuous) or
an itinerant vendor of articles needed in every household. Singular,
communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of
metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the
dissecting theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the
mere acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a
pinch of time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of
an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest. But,
he further added, it is mayhap to relieve the pentup feelings that in
common oppress them for I have more than once observed that birds of a
feather laugh together.

But with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his patron,
has this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted
to civic rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our
internal polity? Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have
counselled? During the recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary
advantage with his granados did this traitor to his kind not seize that
moment to discharge his piece against the empire of which he is a tenant
at will while he trembled for the security of his four per cents? Has he
forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is it that from
being a deluder of others he has become at last his own dupe as he is,
if report belie him not, his own and his only enjoyer? Far be it from
candour to violate the bedchamber of a respectable lady, the daughter of
a gallant major, or to cast the most distant reflections upon her
virtue but if he challenges attention there (as it was indeed highly his
interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy woman, she has been
too long and too persistently denied her legitimate prerogative to
listen to his objurgations with any other feeling than the derision of
the desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his
piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to attempt
illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata
of society! Nay, had the hussy's scouringbrush not been her tutelary
angel, it had gone with her as hard as with Hagar, the Egyptian! In the
question of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in
Mr Cuffe's hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing
retort couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill
becomes him to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home a seedfield
that lies fallow for the want of the ploughshare? A habit reprehensible
at puberty is second nature and an opprobrium in middle life. If he must
dispense his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste
to restore to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his
practice consist better with the doctrines that now engross him. His
marital breast is the repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant
to adduce. The lewd suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for
a consort neglected and debauched but this new exponent of morals and
healer of ills is at his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in
its native orient, throve and flourished and was abundant in balm
but, transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have lost their
quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is stagnant, acid
and inoperative.

The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial
usage of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the
junior medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced to the
delegation that an heir had been born, When he had betaken himself
to the women's apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the
afterbirth in the presence of the secretary of state for domestic
affairs and the members of the privy council, silent in unanimous
exhaustion and approbation the delegates, chafing under the length and
solemnity of their vigil and hoping that the joyful occurrence would
palliate a licence which the simultaneous absence of abigail and
obstetrician rendered the easier, broke out at once into a strife of
tongues. In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring
to urge, to mollify, to refrain. The moment was too propitious for the
display of that discursiveness which seemed the only bond of union among
tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation was successively
eviscerated: the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesarean
section, posthumity with respect to the father and, that rarer form,
with respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as the Childs
Murder and rendered memorable by the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate
Bushe which secured the acquittal of the wrongfully accused, the
rights of primogeniture and king's bounty touching twins and triplets,
miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or dissimulated, the acardiac
_foetus in foetu_ and aprosopia due to a congestion, the agnathia
of certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate Mulligan) in
consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along the medial
line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what the other spoke, the
benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the prolongation of labour
pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure on the vein, the
premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in the
actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix, artificial
insemination by means of syringes, involution of the womb consequent
upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration of the species in
the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that distressing
manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers _Sturzgeburt,_ the
recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births
conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents--in
a word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has classified
in his masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations.
The gravest
problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much
animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as
the forbidding to a gravid woman to step over a countrystile lest,
by her movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature and
the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and
ineffectually entertained, to place her hand against that part of her
person which long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation.
The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's
inkle, strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a
_prima facie_ and natural hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded
(the case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired
infants occasionally born. The hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced
by the Caledonian envoy and worthy of the metaphysical traditions of
the land he stood for, envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic
development at some stage antecedent to the human. An outlandish
delegate sustained against both these views, with such heat as almost
carried conviction, the theory of copulation between women and the males
of brutes, his authority being his own avouchment in support of fables
such as that of the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin poet
has handed down to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression
made by his words was immediate but shortlived. It was effaced as easily
as it had been evoked by an allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in
that vein of pleasantry which none better than he knew how to affect,
postulating as the supremest object of desire a nice clean old man.
Contemporaneously, a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate
Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the juridical and theological
dilemma created in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other,
the difficulty by mutual consent was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom
for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus. Hitherto silent,
whether the better to show by preternatural gravity that curious dignity
of the garb with which he was invested or in obedience to an inward
voice, he delivered briefly and, as some thought, perfunctorily the
ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put asunder what God has
joined.

But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up the
scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and
in the recess appeared. . . Haines! Which of us did not feel his flesh
creep! He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the
other a phial marked _Poison. _ Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted
on all faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin. I anticipated some
such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it seems,
history is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel
Childs. And how I am punished! The inferno has no terrors for me. This
is the appearance is on me. Tare and ages, what way would I be resting
at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back
with my share of songs and himself after me the like of a soulth or a
bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland's, is in this life. It is what I tried
to obliterate my crime. Distractions, rookshooting, the Erse language
(he recited some), laudanum (he raised the phial to his lips), camping
out. In vain! His spectre stalks me. Dope is my only hope. . . Ah!
Destruction! The black panther! With a cry he suddenly vanished and the
panel slid back. An instant later his head appeared in the door opposite
and said: Meet me at Westland Row station at ten past eleven. He was
gone. Tears gushed from the eyes of the dissipated host. The seer
raised his hand to heaven, murmuring: The vendetta of Mananaun! The
sage repeated: _Lex talionis_. The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy
without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Malachias,
overcome by emotion, ceased. The mystery was unveiled. Haines was the
third brother. His real name was Childs. The black panther was himself
the ghost of his own father. He drank drugs to obliterate. For this
relief much thanks. The lonely house by the graveyard is uninhabited.
No soul will live there. The spider pitches her web in the solitude.
The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on it. It is haunted.
Murderer's ground.

What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the
chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the
merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as
her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing
the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a
modest substance in the funds. A score of years are blown away. He is
young Leopold. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within
a mirror (hey, presto! ), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then
is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old
house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on
him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's
thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first
hard hat (ah, that was a day! ), already on the road, a fullfledged
traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented
handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas!
a thing now of the past! ) and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this
or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for
a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me! ) his
studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but, more than these, the dark
eyes and oleaginous address, brought home at duskfall many a commission
to the head of the firm, seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in
the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating),
reading through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a
month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young
knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck within the
mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his
sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a
drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the
first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine
and of all for a bare shilling and her luckpenny), together they hear
the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal
university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever
remember the night: first night, the bridenight. They are entwined
in nethermost darkness, the willer with the willed, and in an instant
(_fiat_! ) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay,
fair reader. In a breath 'twas done but--hold! Back! It must not be! In
terror the poor girl flees away through the murk. She is the bride of
darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe
of day. No, Leopold. Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful
illusion of thy strength was taken from thee--and in vain. No son of thy
loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was
for Rudolph.

The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the
infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions
of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey twilight
ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her
dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her mother with
ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight phantoms
are they, yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely
haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull. They
fade, sad phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home of
screechowls and the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more. And
on the highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion,
the ghosts of beasts. Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and goads
them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. Elk and
yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, mammoth and mastodon, they come
trooping to the sunken sea, _Lacus Mortis_. Ominous revengeful zodiacal
host! They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned, the
trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the giantantlered, snouter
and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their moving moaning
multitude, murderers of the sun.

Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible
gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent
grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own
magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder
of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the
daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one,
Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now
arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour,
shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call
it gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and loose it
streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents
of the cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling,
writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till, after a myriad
metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and triangled sign
upon the forehead of Taurus.

Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at
school together in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades,
Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the
past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them
into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to
my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending
bard, am lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair
with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those
leaves, Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when something
more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your genius
father. All who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to see
you bring forth the work you meditate, to acclaim you Stephaneforos. I
heartily wish you may not fail them. O no, Vincent Lenehan said, laying
a hand on the shoulder near him. Have no fear. He could not leave his
mother an orphan. The young man's face grew dark. All could see how hard
it was for him to be reminded of his promise and of his recent loss. He
would have withdrawn from the feast had not the noise of voices allayed
the smart. Madden had lost five drachmas on Sceptre for a whim of the
rider's name: Lenehan as much more. He told them of the race. The flag
fell and, huuh! off, scamper, the mare ran out freshly with 0. Madden
up. She was leading the field. All hearts were beating. Even Phyllis
could not contain herself. She waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah!
Sceptre wins! But in the straight on the run home when all were in close
order the dark horse Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her. All
was lost now. Phyllis was silent: her eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she
cried, I am undone. But her lover consoled her and brought her a bright
casket of gold in which lay some oval sugarplums which she partook. A
tear fell: one only. A whacking fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane.
Four winners yesterday and three today. What rider is like him? Mount
him on the camel or the boisterous buffalo the victory in a hack canter
is still his. But let us bear it as was the ancient wont. Mercy on the
luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said with a light sigh. She is not the filly
that she was. Never, by this hand, shall we behold such another. By gad,
sir, a queen of them. Do you remember her, Vincent? I wish you could
have seen my queen today, Vincent said. How young she was and radiant
(Lalage were scarce fair beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock of
muslin, I do not know the right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded
us were in bloom: the air drooped with their persuasive odour and with
pollen floating by us. In the sunny patches one might easily have
cooked on a stone a batch of those buns with Corinth fruit in them that
Periplipomenes sells in his booth near the bridge. But she had nought
for her teeth but the arm with which I held her and in that she nibbled
mischievously when I pressed too close. A week ago she lay ill, four
days on the couch, but today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril.
She is more taking then. Her posies tool Mad romp that she is, she had
pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in your ear, my friend, you
will not think who met us as we left the field. Conmee himself! He was
walking by the hedge, reading, I think a brevier book with, I doubt not,
a witty letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the page. The sweet
creature turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to reprove a
slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for the
very trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely
echo in that little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going
by he had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had
poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more
propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and
withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label.
Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far
away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be
born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the
incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos
told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence Egyptian
priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The lords of the
moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload from planet Alpha
of the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles and these
were therefore incarnated by the rubycoloured egos from the second
constellation.

However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him
being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which
was entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was
not the case at all. The individual whose visual organs while the above
was going on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of
animation was as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody
that conjectured the contrary would have found themselves pretty
speedily in the wrong shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts
he had been staring hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled
by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated
amongst a lot of others right opposite to where he was and which was
certainly calculated to attract anyone's remark on account of its
scarlet appearance. He was simply and solely, as it subsequently
transpired for reasons best known to himself, which put quite an
altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after the moment
before's observations about boyhood days and the turf, recollecting two
or three private transactions of his own which the other two were as
mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however, both
their eyes met and as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other was
endeavouring to help himself to the thing he involuntarily determined
to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the neck of the
mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid sought after and
made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it out with, also at the
same time, however, a considerable degree of attentiveness in order not
to upset any of the beer that was in it about the place.

The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the
course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The
debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on
the loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne's house had never
beheld an assembly so representative and so varied nor had the
old rafters of that establishment ever listened to a language so
encyclopaedic. A gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers was there at
the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing
from the briny airs of the Mull of Galloway.