No More Learning

_

After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the 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 lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on
the face of God's earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in
large quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every year,
ten millions between butter and eggs and all the riches drained out of
it by England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the
nose always and gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot more
surplus steam in the same vein. Their 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 that colonel Everard down
there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find anywhere the like
of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated _crescendo_ 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 lookin, he
affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagem England was
toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel,
which he explained to them about the vulnerable point of Achilles, the
Greek hero, a point his auditors at once seized as he completely gripped
their attention by showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His
advice to every Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and work
for Ireland and live for Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare
a single one of her sons.

Silence all round marked the termination of his _finale_. The impervious
navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed.

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

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

--Who's the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately
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, facial
blemishes apart.

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

While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added
he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman
worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few
irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing
to the 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 extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was
rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash 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 much bigger fools than he took them for, rather
concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a par with
the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred million years
the coal seam of the sister island would be played out and if, as
time went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all he could
personally say on the matter was that as a host of contingencies,
equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it was highly
advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both countries even
though poles apart. Another little interesting point, the amours of
whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, reminded him Irish
soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so, in
fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of them, the licensee
of the place rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous
invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as
being on all fours with the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was
prearranged as the lookeron, a student of the human soul if anything,
the others seeing least of the game. And as for the lessee or keeper,
who probably wasn't the other person at all, he (B. ) couldn't help
feeling and most properly it was better to give people like that the
goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and refuse to have
anything to do with them as a golden rule in private life and their
felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a Dannyman coming
forward and turning queen's evidence or king's now like Denis or Peter
Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that he disliked
those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet, though such
criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom in any
shape or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it (while inwardly
remaining what he was) a certain kind of admiration for a man who
had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his
political convictions (though, personally, he would never be a party to
any such thing), off the same bat as those love vendettas of the south,
have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently, after some words
passed between the two concerning her relations with the other lucky
mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on
his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial _liaison_
by plunging his knife into her, until it just struck him that
Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for the actual
perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably informed,
actually party to the ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea some
legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case that was very ancient
history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he
had transparently outlived his welcome. He ought to have either died
naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses, always farewell
positively last performance then come up smiling again. Generous to a
fault of course, temperamental, no economising or any idea of the sort,
always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So similarly he had a very
shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some l s d. in the
course of his perambulations round the docks in the congenial atmosphere
of the _Old Ireland_ tavern, come back to Erin and so on. Then as for
the other he had heard not so long before the same identical lingo as he
told Stephen how he simply but effectually silenced the offender.

--He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the
whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and
in a 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 for he seemed to
glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly.

--_Ex quibus_, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or
four eyes conversing, _Christus_ or Bloom his name is or after all any
other, _secundum carnem_.

--Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides
of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to
right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is
though 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 the due
instalments plan. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate
people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular,
in the next house so to speak.

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

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

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

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

Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this
synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular.
He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those
crabs about Ringsend in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours
of different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere
beneath or seemed to. Then he 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
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 a half laugh, that I may
be important because I belong to the _faubourg Saint Patrice_ called
Ireland for short.

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

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

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

Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of
coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding: 1170

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

At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked
down but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction
to put on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some
kind was clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of
his recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way
foreign to his sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B attached
the utmost importance had not been all that was needful or he hadn't
been familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear
for the young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an air
of some consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris,
the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister,
failing to throw much light on the 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, for one, the halfcrazy faddist,
respectably connected though of inadequate means, with his mad vagaries
among whose other gay doings when rotto and making himself a nuisance
to everybody all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in
public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual _denouement_
after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot
water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint
to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to
be made amenable under section two of the criminal law amendment act,
certain names of those subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged
for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly,
putting two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly turned a
deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo
which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts even in the house
of lords because early in life the occupant of the throne, then heir
apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high personages
simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state, he reflected
about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running counter to
morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before under their
veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy,
as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the reason they
thought they were probably whatever it was except women chiefly who were
always fiddling more or less at one another it being largely a matter of
dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like distinctive underclothing
should, and every welltailored man must, trying to make the gap wider
between them by innuendo and give more of a genuine filip to acts of
impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his and then he untied her,
mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal islands, say, at ninety
degrees in the shade not caring a continental. However, reverting to the
original, there were on the other hand others who had forced their way
to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer
force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir.

For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even
to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could
not exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the
bad having in fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the
acquaintance of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food
for reflection would amply 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 of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the
whole galaxy of events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the
world we live in especially as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz.
coalminers, divers, scavengers etc. , were very much under the microscope
lately. To improve the shining hour he 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 (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one guinea per
column. _My Experiences_, let us say, _in a Cabman's Shelter_.

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

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

--_This morning_ (Hynes put it in of course) _the remains of the late Mr
Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, no 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_ (certainly Hynes wrote it with
a nudge from Corny) _by Messrs H. J. O'Neill and Son, 164 North Strand
Road. The mourners included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan
(brother-in-law), Jno. Henry Menton, solr, Martin Cunningham, John
Power, eatondph 1/8 ador dorador douradora_ (must be where he called
Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad) _Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus,
Stephen Dedalus B. ,4. , Edw. J. Lambert, Cornelius T. Kelleher, Joseph
M'C Hynes, L. Boom, CP M'Coy,--M'lntosh and several others_.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read:
_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 no 15 until he was his old self again with
no-one to point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone
down on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered
his senses. Dead he wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they
brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer
general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and so on.

All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their
memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels and
not singly but in their thousands and then complete oblivion because it
was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely of course there was even a shadow
of truth in the stones and, even supposing, he thought a return highly
inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in
his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when
his various different political arrangements were nearing completion
or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having neglected to
change his boots and clothes-after a wetting when a cold resulted and
failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his room till he
eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a fortnight was at
an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find the job was taken
out of their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted with his movements
even before there was absolutely no clue as to his whereabouts which
were decidedly of the _Alice, where art thou_ order even prior to his
starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart so the
remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within the bounds of
possibility. Naturally then it would prey on his mind as a born leader
of men which undoubtedly he was and a commanding figure, a sixfooter
or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged feet, whereas
Messrs So and So who, though they weren't even a patch on the former
man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were very few and
far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with feet of clay,
and then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on him with mutual
mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You had to come
back. That haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the understudy in
the title _role_ how to. He saw him once on the auspicious occasion
when they broke up the type in the _Insuppressible_ or was it _United
Ireland_, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in point of fact,
handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he said _Thank you_,
excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid exterior notwithstanding
the little misadventure mentioned between the cup and the lip: what's
bred in the bone. Still as regards return. You were a lucky dog if
they didn't set the terrier at you directly you got back. 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 to the best of his
recollection he, the heir, went down in as the evidence went to show
and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, lord Bellew was it, as he
might very easily have picked up the details from some pal on board ship
and then, when got up to tally with the description given, introduce
himself with: _Excuse me, my name is So and So_ or some such commonplace
remark. A more prudent course, as Bloom said to the not over effusive,
in fact like the distinguished personage under 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 _soi-disant_ townclerk Henry
Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man's thighs.
I seen her picture in a barber's. The husband was a captain or an
officer.

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

This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair
amount of laughter among his _entourage_. As regards Bloom he, without
the faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of
the door and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused
extraordinary 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
nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them till bit by
bit matters came to a climax and the matter became the talk of the town
till the staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not a few
evildisposed, however, who were resolved upon encompassing his downfall
though the thing was public property all along though not to anything
like the sensational extent that it subsequently blossomed into. Since
their names were coupled, though, since he was her declared favourite,
where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the rank and file
from the housetops, the fact, namely, that he had shared her bedroom
which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the
packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses
swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in
the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance
of a ladder in night apparel, having gained admittance in the same
fashion, a fact the weeklies, addicted to the lubric a little, simply
coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was
it was simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch, with
nothing in common between them beyond the name, and then a real man
arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim
to her siren charms and forgetting home ties, the usual sequel, to bask
in the loved one's smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial,
needless to say, cropped up. Can real love, supposing there happens to
be another chap in the case, exist between married folk? Poser.
Though it was no concern of theirs absolutely if he regarded her with
affection, carried away by a wave of folly. A magnificent specimen of
manhood he was truly augmented obviously by gifts of a high order, as
compared with the other military supernumerary that is (who was just the
usual everyday _farewell, my gallant captain_ kind of an individual in
the light dragoons, the 18th hussars to be accurate) and inflammable
doubtless (the fallen leader, that is, not the other) in his own
peculiar way which she of course, woman, quickly perceived as highly
likely to carve his way to fame which he almost bid fair to do till the
priests and ministers of the gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch
adherents, and his beloved evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman
service in the rural parts of the country by taking up the cudgels on
their behalf in a way that exceeded their most sanguine expectations,
very effectually cooked his matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of
fire on his head much in the same way as the fabled ass's kick. Looking
back now in a retrospective kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of
dream. And then coming back was the worst thing you ever did because it
went without saying you would feel out of place as things always moved
with the times. Why, as he reflected, 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 reside on the north side. North or
south, however, it was just the wellknown case of hot passion, pure and
simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just bore out the
very thing he was saying as she also was Spanish or half so, types that
wouldn't do things by halves, passionate abandon of the south, casting
every shred of decency to the winds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Mrs Bloom, my wife the _prima donna_ Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom
indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about ninety six. Very like
her then.

Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his
1440 legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of
Major Brian Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency
as a singer having even made her bow to the public when her years
numbered barely sweet sixteen. As for the face it was a speaking
likeness in expression but it did not do justice to her figure which
came in for a lot of notice usually and which did not come out to the
best advantage in that getup. She could without difficulty, he said,
have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent curves of
the. He dwelt, being a bit of an artist in his spare time, on the female
form in general developmentally because, as it so happened, no later
than that afternoon he had seen those Grecian statues, 1450 perfectly
developed as works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could give
the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry, all the rest. Yes,
puritanisme, it does though Saint Joseph's sovereign thievery alors
(Bandez! ) Figne toi trop. Whereas no photo could because it simply
wasn't art in a word.

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

The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated,
_distingue_ and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the
bunch though you wouldn't think he had it in him yet you would. Besides
he said the picture was handsome which, say what you like, it was though
at the 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 gutterpress about the same old matrimonial
tangle alleging misconduct with professional golfer or the newest
stage favourite instead of being honest and aboveboard about the whole
business. How they were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up
between the two so that their names were coupled in the public eye
was told in court with letters containing the habitual mushy and
compromising expressions leaving no loophole to show that they openly
cohabited two or three times a week at some wellknown seaside hotel and
relations, when the thing ran its normal course, became in due course
intimate. Then the decree _nisi_ and the King's proctor tries to show
cause why and, he failing to quash it, _nisi_ was made absolute. But as
for that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely were in one
another, could safely afford to ignore it as they very largely did till
the matter was put in the hands of a solicitor who filed a petition for
the party wronged in due course. He, B, enjoyed the distinction of being
close to Erin's uncrowned king in the flesh when the thing occurred on
the historic _fracas_ when the fallen leader's, who notoriously stuck to
his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the mantle of adultery,
(leader's) trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a dozen or
possibly even more than that penetrated into the printing works of the
_Insuppressible_ or no it was _United Ireland_ (a by no means by the
by appropriate appellative) and broke up the typecases with hammers or
something like that all on account of some scurrilous effusions from
the facile pens of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging
occupation reflecting on the erstwhile tribune's private morals. Though
palpably a radically 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 they discovered to their vast
discomfiture that their idol had feet of clay after placing him upon a
pedestal which she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were
particularly hot times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a
minor injury from a nasty prod of some chap's elbow in the crowd that
of course congregated lodging some place about the pit of the stomach,
fortunately not of a grave character. His hat (Parnell's) a silk one was
inadvertently knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was
the man who picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence
meaning to return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost
celerity) who panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away
from his hat at the time all the same being a gentleman born with a
stake in the country he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it more
for the kudos of the thing than anything else, what's bred in the bone
instilled into him in infancy at his mother's knee in the shape of
knowing what good form was came out at once because he turned round to
the donor and thanked him with perfect _aplomb_, saying: _Thank you,
sir_, though in a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the
legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the
course of the day, history repeating itself with a difference, after
the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone in his glory
after the grim task of having committed his remains to the grave.

On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes
of the cabman and so on who passed it all off as a jest, laughing 1530
immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the
wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case
for the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate
husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from
the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial
moment in a loving position locked in one another's arms, drawing
attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a domestic
rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord and
master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not
receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would overlook
the matter and let bygones be bygones with tears in her eyes though
possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the same time as quite
possibly there were several others. He personally, being of a sceptical
bias, believed and didn't make the smallest bones about saying so either
that man or men in the plural were always hanging around on the waiting
list about a lady, even supposing she was the best wife in the world
and they got on fairly well together for the sake of argument, when,
neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life and was on
for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on
her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred
on another, the cause of many _liaisons_ between still attractive
married women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as
several famous cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt.

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

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

--Some time yesterday, Stephen said.

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

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

Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected.
Though they didn't see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there
somehow was as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the
one train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly
some score of years previously when he had been a _quasi_ aspirant to
parliamentary honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in
retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had
a sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas. For instance when the
evicted tenants question, then at its first inception, bulked largely in
people's mind though, it goes without saying, not contributing a copper
or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some of which wouldn't
exactly hold water, he at the outset in principle at all events was in
thorough sympathy with peasant possession as voicing the trend of modern
opinion (a partiality, however, which, realising his mistake, he was
subsequently partially cured of) and even was twitted with going a
step farther than Michael Davitt in the striking views he at one time
inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason he strongly
resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion by our
friend at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan's so that he,
though often considerably misunderstood and the least pugnacious of
mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to give
him (metaphorically) one in the gizzard though, so far as politics
themselves were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties
invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of mutual animosity
and the misery and suffering it entailed as a foregone conclusion on
fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a word.

Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it
was, it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it
was a bit risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue
(somebody having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash
altogether as on the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed
unknown) with a lame paw (not that the cases were either identical or
the reverse though he had hurt his hand too) to Ontario Terrace as he
very distinctly remembered, having been there, so to speak. On the
other hand it was altogether far and away too late for the Sandymount
or Sandycove suggestion so that he was in some perplexity as to which of
the two alternatives. Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved him
to avail himself to the full of the 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 plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat
doubled into a pillow at least he would be in safe hands and as warm as
a toast on a trivet he failed to perceive any very vast amount of harm
in that always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked up.
A move had to be made because that merry old soul, the grasswidower
in question who appeared to be glued to the spot, didn't appear in any
particular hurry to wend his way home to his dearly beloved Queenstown
and it was highly likely some sponger's bawdyhouse of retired beauties
where age was no bar off Sheriff street lower would be the best clue
to that equivocal character's whereabouts for a few days to come,
alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids') with sixchamber
revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to freeze
the marrow of anybody's bones and mauling their largesized charms
betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment of large
potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for as to who
he in reality was let x equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra
remarks _passim_. At the same time he inwardly chuckled over his gentle
repartee to the blood and ouns champion about his god being a jew.
People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled
them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point too of tender
Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because mostly they appeared to imagine he
came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhereabouts in the county Sligo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what,
found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a
hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which
time (completely regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied
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
sufficiently awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions,
that is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial
remark.

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

--Come, he counselled to close the _seance_.

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

--One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of
the moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs
upside down, on the tables in cafes. To which impromptu the neverfailing
Bloom replied without a moment's 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, his right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The
night air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit
weak on his pins.

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

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

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

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

So they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art for which
Bloom, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made
tracks arm in arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though
confessedly grand in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to
follow at the first go-off but the music of Mercadante's _Huguenots_,
Meyerbeer's _Seven Last Words on the Cross_ and Mozart's _Twelfth Mass_
he simply revelled in, the _Gloria_ in that being, to his mind, the acme
of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else into
a cocked hat. He infinitely preferred the sacred music of the catholic
church to anything the opposite shop could offer in that line such as
those Moody and Sankey hymns or _Bid me to live and i will live
thy protestant to be_. He also yielded to none in his admiration of
Rossini's _Stabat Mater_, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers,
in which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable
sensation, he might safely say, greatly adding to her other laureis and
putting the others totally in the shade, in the jesuit fathers' church
in upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the
doors to hear her with virtuosos, or _virtuosi_ rather. There was the
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 _par excellence_ Lionel's air in _Martha,
M'appari_, which, curiously enough, he had heard or overheard, to be
more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the
lips of Stephen's respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the
number, in fact, which made all the others take a back seat. Stephen, in
reply to a politely put query, said he didn't sing it but 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 B. did not quite
recall though the name certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas
and Farnaby and son with their _dux_ and _comes_ conceits and Byrd
(William) who played the virginals, he said, in the Queen's chapel or
anywhere else he found them and one Tomkins who made toys or airs and
John Bull.

On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond
the swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground,
brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not
perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the allusion to sixtyfive
guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the political
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,
who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual, plucked the other's sleeve
gently, jocosely remarking:

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

They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth
anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite
near so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh
because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a
taildangler, a headhanger putting his hind foot foremost the while the
lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. But such
a good poor brute he was sorry he hadn't a lump of sugar but, as he
wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every emergency
that might crop up. He was just a big nervous foolish noodly kind of a
horse, without a second care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected,
take that mongrel in Barney Kiernan's, of the same size, would be a holy
horror to face.