rank and fame that tempted thee,’Twas empire charmed thy heart.
The professor grinned, locking his long lips.
– Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said.
He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him with quick grace, said :
– Silence for my brandnew riddle!
– Imperium romanum, J.J. O’Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler than British or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire.
Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling.
– That’s it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire. We haven’t got the chance of a snowball in hell.
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME
– Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We mustn’t be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome, imperial, imperious, imperative.
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 shore on which he set his foot (on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal obsession. He gazed about him in his toga and he said : Is it 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, M. 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 railway line? Reflect, ponder, excogitate, reply.
Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title 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 knew his wife too. The bloodiest old tartar God 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 grass 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 Tirconnel 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 NOBLE 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 Ægospotami. 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 matinée. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!
He whispered then near Stephen’s ear :
LENEHEN’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 Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead.
Myles
