—­We knew perfectly well of course that though it was bound to come to the light he would find considerable difficulty in endeavouring to try to induce himself to try to endeavour to ascertain the spiritual plenipotentiary and so we knew of course perfectly well—­

Murmuring faces waited and watched; murmurous voices filled the dark shell of the cave.  He feared intensely in spirit and in flesh but, raising his head bravely, he strode into the room firmly.  A doorway, a room, the same room, same window.  He told himself calmly that those words had absolutely no sense which had seemed to rise murmurously from the dark.  He told himself that it was simply his room with the door open.

He closed the door and, walking swiftly to the bed, knelt beside it and covered his face with his hands.  His hands were cold and damp and his limbs ached with chill.  Bodily unrest and chill and weariness beset him, routing his thoughts.  Why was he kneeling there like a child saying his evening prayers?  To be alone with his soul, to examine his conscience, to meet his sins face to face, to recall their times and manners and circumstances, to weep over them.  He could not weep.  He could not summon them to his memory.  He felt only an ache of soul and body, his whole being, memory, will, understanding, flesh, benumbed and weary.

That was the work of devils, to scatter his thoughts and over-cloud his conscience, assailing him at the gates of the cowardly and sin-corrupted flesh:  and, praying God timidly to forgive him his weakness, he crawled up on to the bed and, wrapping the blankets closely about him, covered his face again with his hands.  He had sinned.  He had sinned so deeply against heaven and before God that he was not worthy to be called God’s child.

Could it be that he, Stephen Dedalus, had done those things?  His conscience sighed in answer.  Yes, he had done them, secretly, filthily, time after time, and, hardened in sinful impenitence, he had dared to wear the mask of holiness before the tabernacle itself while his soul within was a living mass of corruption.  How came it that God had not struck him dead?  The leprous company of his sins closed about him, breathing upon him, bending over him from all sides.  He strove to forget them in an act of prayer, huddling his limbs closer together and binding down his eyelids:  but the senses of his soul would not be bound and, though his eyes were shut fast, he saw the places where he had sinned and, though his ears were tightly covered, he heard.  He desired with all his will not to hear or see.  He desired till his frame shook under the strain of his desire and until the senses of his soul closed.  They closed for an instant and then opened.  He saw.

A field of stiff weeds and thistles and tufted nettle-bunches.  Thick among the tufts of rank stiff growth lay battered canisters and clots and coils of solid excrement.  A faint marshlight struggling upwards from all the ordure through the bristling grey-green weeds.  An evil smell, faint and foul as the light, curled upwards sluggishly out of the canisters and from the stale crusted dung.