It was easy what he had to do.  All he had to do was when the dinner was over and he came out in his turn to go on walking but not out to the corridor but up the staircase on the right that led to the castle.  He had nothing to do but that:  to turn to the right and walk fast up the staircase and in half a minute he would be in the low dark narrow corridor that led through the castle to the rector’s room.  And every fellow had said that it was unfair, even the fellow out of second of grammar who had said that about the senate and the Roman people.

What would happen?

He heard the fellows of the higher line stand up at the top of the refectory and heard their steps as they came down the matting:  Paddy Rath and Jimmy Magee and the Spaniard and the Portuguese and the fifth was big Corrigan who was going to be flogged by Mr Gleeson.  That was why the prefect of studies had called him a schemer and pandied him for nothing:  and, straining his weak eyes, tired with the tears, he watched big Corrigan’s broad shoulders and big hanging black head passing in the file.  But he had done something and besides Mr Gleeson would not flog him hard:  and he remembered how big Corrigan looked in the bath.  He had skin the same colour as the turf-coloured bogwater in the shallow end of the bath and when he walked along the side his feet slapped loudly on the wet tiles and at every step his thighs shook a little because he was fat.

The refectory was half empty and the fellows were still passing out in file.  He could go up the staircase because there was never a priest or a prefect outside the refectory door.  But he could not go.  The rector would side with the prefect of studies and think it was a schoolboy trick and then the prefect of studies would come in every day the same, only it would be worse because he would be dreadfully waxy at any fellow going up to the rector about him.  The fellows had told him to go but they would not go themselves.  They had forgotten all about it.  No, it was best to forget all about it and perhaps the prefect of studies had only said he would come in.  No, it was best to hide out of the way because when you were small and young you could often escape that way.

The fellows at his table stood up.  He stood up and passed out among them in the file.  He had to decide.  He was coming near the door.  If he went on with the fellows he could never go up to the rector because he could not leave the playground for that.  And if he went and was pandied all the same all the fellows would make fun and talk about young Dedalus going up to the rector to tell on the prefect of studies.

He was walking down along the matting and he saw the door before him.  It was impossible:  he could not.  He thought of the baldy head of the prefect of studies with the cruel no-coloured eyes looking at him and he heard the voice of the prefect of studies asking him twice what his name was.  Why could he not remember the name when he was told the first time?  Was he not listening the first time or was it to make fun out of the name?  The great men in the history had names like that and nobody made fun of them.  It was his own name that he should have made fun of if he wanted to make fun.  Dolan:  it was like the name of a woman who washed clothes.