In any case that was very ancient history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his welcome.  He ought to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high.  Like actresses, always farewell positively last performance then come up smiling again.  Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow.  So similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some l s d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in the congenial atmosphere of the old Ireland tavern, come back to Erin and so on.  Then as for the other he had heard not so long before the same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually silenced the offender.

—­He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the whole eventempered person declared, I let slip.  He called me a jew and in a heated fashion offensively.  So I without deviating from plain facts in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his family like me though in reality I’m not.  That was one for him.  A soft answer turns away wrath.  He hadn’t a word to say for himself as everyone saw.  Am I not right?

He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride at the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to glean in a kind of a way that it wasn’t all exactly.

—­Ex QUIBUS, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or four eyes conversing, CHRISTUS or Bloom his name is or after all any other, SECUNDUM CARNEM.

—­Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides of the question.  It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government it deserves.  But with a little goodwill all round.  It’s all very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality.  I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form.  It never reaches anything or stops anything.  A revolution must come on the due instalments plan.  It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so to speak.

—­Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes’ war, Stephen assented, between Skinner’s alley and Ormond market.

Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that was overwhelmingly right.  And the whole world was full of that sort of thing.

—­You just took the words out of my mouth, he said.  A hocuspocus of conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn’t remotely ...

All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.