He could still hear his father’s voice—­

—­When you kick out for yourself, Stephen—­as I daresay you will one of these days—­remember, whatever you do, to mix with gentlemen.  When I was a young fellow I tell you I enjoyed myself.  I mixed with fine decent fellows.  Everyone of us could do something.  One fellow had a good voice, another fellow was a good actor, another could sing a good comic song, another was a good oarsman or a good racket player, another could tell a good story and so on.  We kept the ball rolling anyhow and enjoyed ourselves and saw a bit of life and we were none the worse of it either.  But we were all gentlemen, Stephen—­at least I hope we were—­and bloody good honest Irishmen too.  That’s the kind of fellows I want you to associate with, fellows of the right kidney.  I’m talking to you as a friend, Stephen.  I don’t believe a son should be afraid of his father.  No, I treat you as your grandfather treated me when I was a young chap.  We were more like brothers than father and son.  I’ll never forget the first day he caught me smoking.  I was standing at the end of the South Terrace one day with some maneens like myself and sure we thought we were grand fellows because we had pipes stuck in the corners of our mouths.  Suddenly the governor passed.  He didn’t say a word, or stop even.  But the next day, Sunday, we were out for a walk together and when we were coming home he took out his cigar case and said:—­By the by, Simon, I didn’t know you smoked, or something like that.—­Of course I tried to carry it off as best I could.—­If you want a good smoke, he said, try one of these cigars.  An American captain made me a present of them last night in Queenstown.

Stephen heard his father’s voice break into a laugh which was almost a sob.

—­He was the handsomest man in Cork at that time, by God he was!  The women used to stand to look after him in the street.

He heard the sob passing loudly down his father’s throat and opened his eyes with a nervous impulse.  The sunlight breaking suddenly on his sight turned the sky and clouds into a fantastic world of sombre masses with lakelike spaces of dark rosy light.  His very brain was sick and powerless.  He could scarcely interpret the letters of the signboards of the shops.  By his monstrous way of life he seemed to have put himself beyond the limits of reality.  Nothing moved him or spoke to him from the real world unless he heard in it an echo of the infuriated cries within him.  He could respond to no earthly or human appeal, dumb and insensible to the call of summer and gladness and companionship, wearied and dejected by his father’s voice.  He could scarcely recognize as his own thoughts, and repeated slowly to himself: 

—­I am Stephen Dedalus.  I am walking beside my father whose name is Simon Dedalus.  We are in Cork, in Ireland.  Cork is a city.  Our room is in the Victoria Hotel.  Victoria and Stephen and Simon.  Simon and Stephen and Victoria.  Names.