—­And twopence, he said, for a pint.  Throw it there.

Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap.  Dressing, undressing.  Buck
Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly: 

—­He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord.  Thus spake
Zarathustra.

His plump body plunged.

—­We’ll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the path and smiling at wild Irish.

Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.

—­The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried.  Half twelve.

—­Good, Stephen said.

He walked along the upwardcurving path.

    Liliata rutilantium. 
    TURMA CIRCUMDET. 
    Iubilantium te virginum.

The priest’s grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly.  I will not sleep here tonight.  Home also I cannot go.

A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea.  Turning the curve he waved his hand.  It called again.  A sleek brown head, a seal’s, far out on the water, round.

Usurper.

* * * * * * *

—­You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?

—­Tarentum, sir.

—­Very good.  Well?

—­There was a battle, sir.

—­Very good.  Where?

The boy’s blank face asked the blank window.

Fabled by the daughters of memory.  And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled it.  A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake’s wings of excess.  I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame.  What’s left us then?

—­I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.

—­Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred book.

—­Yes, sir.  And he said:  Another victory like that and we are done for.

That phrase the world had remembered.  A dull ease of the mind.  From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear.  Any general to any officers.  They lend ear.

—­You, Armstrong, Stephen said.  What was the end of Pyrrhus?

—­End of Pyrrhus, sir?

—­I know, sir.  Ask me, sir, Comyn said.

—­Wait.  You, Armstrong.  Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?

A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong’s satchel.  He curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly.  Crumbs adhered to the tissue of his lips.  A sweetened boy’s breath.  Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy.  Vico road, Dalkey.

—­Pyrrhus, sir?  Pyrrhus, a pier.

All laughed.  Mirthless high malicious laughter.  Armstrong looked round at his classmates, silly glee in profile.  In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.