—­Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar.

—­ ... in which everyone can find his own.  So Mr Justice Madden in his diary of master William silence has found the hunting terms ...  Yes?  What is it?

—­There’s a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and offering a card.  From the Freeman.  He wants to see the files of the Kilkenny people for last year.

—­Certainly, certainly, certainly.  Is the gentleman? ...

He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked, asked, creaked, asked: 

—­Is he? ...  O, there!

Brisk in a galliard he was off, out.  In the daylit corridor he talked with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most honest broadbrim.

—­This gentleman?  FREEMAN’S journal?  Kilkenny people?  To be sure.  Good day, sir.  Kilkenny ...  We have certainly ...

A patient silhouette waited, listening.

—­All the leading provincial ...  Northern whig, cork examiner, ENNISCORTHY Guardian, 1903 ...  Will you please? ...  Evans, conduct this gentleman ...  If you just follow the atten ...  Or, please allow me ...  This way ...  Please, sir ...

Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing dark figure following his hasty heels.

The door closed.

—­The sheeny!  Buck Mulligan cried.

He jumped up and snatched the card.

—­What’s his name?  Ikey Moses?  Bloom.

He rattled on: 

—­Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more.  I found him over in the museum where I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite.  The Greek mouth that has never been twisted in prayer.  Every day we must do homage to her.  Life of life, thy lips enkindle.

Suddenly he turned to Stephen: 

—­He knows you.  He knows your old fellow.  O, I fear me, he is Greeker than the Greeks.  His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove.  Venus Kallipyge.  O, the thunder of those loins!  The god pursuing the maiden hid.

—­We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best’s approval.  We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if at all, as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome.

—­Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty from Kyrios Menelaus’ brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope.  Twenty years he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland.  His life was rich.  His art, more than the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the art of surfeit.  Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar