about 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 flags 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 running 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,  Vin. Lynch, a  Scots
fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very  sad for a racinghorse he fancied and
Stephen  D. Leop.  Bloom there for a languor he had but was  now better,  he
having dreamed  tonight  a strange  fancy  of  his dame Mrs  Moll  with  red
slippers on in 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 to 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 woman, 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 boiling-cook'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. <i>Mort aux
vaches</i>, says Frank then in the French language that had been indentured to a
brandy shipper 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 or  moonlight or fecking maid's  linen  or choking  chickens 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  wools, 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
of  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  cattle  breeder 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 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  then 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 quarters to show their  ladyships a mystery and
roar  and bellow  out of him in bull's 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
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,
<i>Bos Bovum</i>, 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 drinking trough 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
bull's 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 up
on 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:
<i>Mr Malachi Mulligan, Fertiliser and Incubator,  Lambay Island</i>.  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  on 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 for 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 inconvenience (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  not much  in  favour  with  our ascendancy
party. He proposed  to set up there a national fertilising farm to be  named
<i>Omphalos</i> 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.
The 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: <i>Talis ac tanta  depravatio  hujus seculi, O quirites,  ut
matres   familiarum   nostro<oe>   lascivas   cujuslibet   semiviri   libici
titillationes testibus  ponderosis atque excelsis  erectionibus  centurionum
Romanorum magnopere anteponunt:</i> 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  his  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
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 lady,  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  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 storms 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 pose
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 head,
asked  the narrator as plainly as was ever done in words  if  he might treat
him with a  cup of it. <i>Mais bien  sèr</i>, noble stranger, said he  cheerily, <i>et
mille compliments</i>. 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 feast day as she told
me) 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 blessing 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! Would to God that foresight had 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  <i>marchand de  capotes</i>, 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 FØcondateur,  tripping in, my
friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked
a  half  bottle <i>avec lui</i> in  a circle of the best wits  of the town),  is my
authority  that  in Cape Horn, <i>ventre biche</i>, they have a  rain that will wet
through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells
me,  <i>sans  blague</i>, has sent more than one luckless  fellow in  good  earnest
posthaste to another world. Pooh! A <i>livre!</i> 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 heart  and it  has become a household word that <i>il y a deux choses</i>
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 humorous  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 cow-flesh! 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 immodest squirmings of his body, how you do
tease a body! Drat the man! Bless me, I'm all of a wibblywobbly. 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 ain't 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 <i>enceinte</i> 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  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 <i>mots</i>  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 teethed and  feet
first into the world, which  the dint  of the  surgeon's pliers in his skull
lent indeed a colour to, so as it 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 a 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  express 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 Crothers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a resonant comment of
emphasis, old Glory  Allelujerum was round again to-day, 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
civil 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 seed-field that lies fallow
for the want of a  ploughshare?  A habit reprehensible at puberty  is second
nature and an  opprobium in  middlelife.  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
usages 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 officer 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 restrain. 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
endered 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 and dissimulated, acardiac <i>f<oe>tus in f<oe>tu</i>, aprosopia due to a
congestion, the agnatia  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  perpetuation of  the species in  the case  of  females
impregnated  by delinquent rape, that  distressing manner of delivery called
by the Brandenburghers <i>Sturzgeburt</i>, the  recorded instances of multigeminal,
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  master-piece  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 country
stile 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 <i>primafacie</i>  and
natural hypothetical explanation of swineheaded (the  case of Madame Grissel
Steevens  was  not forgotten)  or doghaired infants occasionally  born.  The
hypothesis  of a plasmic memory, advanced by the taledonian 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 know 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 in the even  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 <i>Poison</i>. Surprise, horror, loathing were  depicted on  all faces while
he  eyed  them with a  ghastly 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