Ulysses Part 37

He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs, pausing:

--What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers.

The Jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: _It is meet to be here. Let us build an altar to Jehovah_. The Roman, like the Englishman who follows in his footsteps, brought to every new sh.o.r.e on which he set his foot (on our sh.o.r.e he never set it) only his cloacal obsession. He gazed about him in his toga and he said: _It is meet to be here. Let us construct a watercloset._

--Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old ancient ancestors, as we read in the first chapter of Guinness's, were partial to the running stream.

--They were nature's gentlemen, J. J. O'Molloy murmured. But we have also Roman law.

--And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded.

--Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. O'Molloy asked.

It was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going swimmingly ...

--First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready?

Mr O'Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in from the hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he entered.

--_Entrez, mes enfants!_ Lenehan cried.

--I escort a suppliant, Mr O'Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led by Experience visits Notoriety.

--How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your governor is just gone.???

Lenehan said to all:

--Silence! What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, ponder, excogitate, reply.

Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the t.i.tle and signature.

--Who? the editor asked.

Bit torn off.

--Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said.

--That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken?

_On swift sail flaming From storm and south He comes, pale vampire, Mouth to my mouth._

--Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their shoulders. Foot and mouth? Are you turned...?

Bullockbefriending bard.

SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT

--Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr Garrett Deasy asked me to...

--O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The bloodiest old tartar G.o.d ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth disease and no mistake! The night she threw the soup in the waiter's face in the Star and Garter. Oho!

A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks. O'Rourke, prince of Breffni.

--Is he a widower? Stephen asked.

--Ay, a gra.s.s one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the typescript. Emperor's horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on the ramparts of Vienna. Don't you forget! Maximilian Karl O'Donnell, graf von Tirconnell in Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an Austrian fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble there one day. Wild geese. O yes, every time. Don't you forget that!

--The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O'Molloy said quietly, turning a horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thank you job.

Professor MacHugh turned on him.

--And if not? he said.

--I'll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian it was one day... LOST CAUSES

n.o.bLE MARQUESS MENTIONED

--We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money. Material domination. _Dominus!_ Lord! Where is the spirituality? Lord Jesus? Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend club.

But the Greek!

KYRIE ELEISON!

A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long lips.

--The Greek! he said again. _Kyrios!_ Shining word! The vowels the Semite and the Saxon know not. _Kyrie!_ The radiance of the intellect.

I ought to profess Greek, the language of the mind. _Kyrie eleison!_ The closetmaker and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit. We are liege subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar and of the empire of the spirit, not an _imperium,_ that went under with the Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled by an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to a lost cause.

He strode away from them towards the window.

--They went forth to battle, Mr O'Madden Burke said greyly, but they always fell.

--Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in the latter half of the _matinee_. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!

He whispered then near Stephen's ear:

LENEHAN'S LIMERICK

_There's a ponderous pundit MacHugh Who wears goggles of ebony hue.

As he mostly sees double To wear them why trouble?

I can't see the Joe Miller. Can you?_

In mourning for Sall.u.s.t, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead.

Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket.

--That'll be all right, he said. I'll read the rest after. That'll be all right.