Chapter 4

by James Joyce

　　Sunday was dedicated to the mystery of the Holy Trinity, Monday to theHoly Ghost, Tuesday to the Guardian Angels, Wednesday to saint Joseph,Thursday to the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, Friday to theSuffering Jesus, Saturday to the Blessed Virgin Mary.Every morning he hallowed himself anew in the presence of some holyimage or mystery. His day began with an heroic offering of its everymoment of thought or action for the intentions of the sovereign pontiffand with an early mass. The raw morning air whetted his resolute piety;and often as he knelt among the few worshippers at the side-altar,following with his interleaved prayer-book the murmur of the priest, heglanced up for an instant towards the vested figure standing in thegloom between the two candles, which were the old and the newtestaments, and imagined that he was kneeling at mass in the catacombs.His daily life was laid out in devotional areas. By means ofejaculations and prayers he stored up ungrudgingly for the souls inpurgatory centuries of days and quarantines and years; yet thespiritual triumph which he felt in achieving with ease so many fabulousages of canonical penances did not wholly reward his zeal of prayer,since he could never know how much temporal punishment he had remittedby way of suffrage for the agonizing souls; and fearful lest in themidst of the purgatorial fire, which differed from the infernal only inthat it was not everlasting, his penance might avail no more than adrop of moisture, he drove his soul daily through an increasing circleof works of supererogation.Every part of his day, divided by what he regarded now as the duties ofhis station in life, circled about its own centre of spiritual energy.His life seemed to have drawn near to eternity; every thought, word,and deed, every instance of consciousness could be made to revibrateradiantly in heaven; and at times his sense of such immediaterepercussion was so lively that he seemed to feel his soul in devotionpressing like fingers the keyboard of a great cash register and to seethe amount of his purchase start forth immediately in heaven, not as anumber but as a frail column of incense or as a slender flower.The rosaries, too, which he said constantly--for he carried his beadsloose in his trousers' pockets that he might tell them as he walked thestreets--transformed themselves into coronals of flowers of such vagueunearthly texture that they seemed to him as hueless and odourless asthey were nameless. He offered up each of his three daily chaplets thathis soul might grow strong in each of the three theological virtues, infaith in the Father Who had created him, in hope in the Son Who hadredeemed him and in love of the Holy Ghost Who had sanctified him; andthis thrice triple prayer he offered to the Three Persons through Maryin the name of her joyful and sorrowful and glorious mysteries.On each of the seven days of the week he further prayed that one of theseven gifts of the Holy Ghost might descend upon his soul and drive outof it day by day the seven deadly sins which had defiled it in thepast; and he prayed for each gift on its appointed day, confident thatit would descend upon him, though it seemed strange to him at timesthat wisdom and understanding and knowledge were so distinct in theirnature that each should be prayed for apart from the others. Yet hebelieved that at some future stage of his spiritual progress thisdifficulty would be removed when his sinful soul had been raised upfrom its weakness and enlightened by the Third Person of the MostBlessed Trinity. He believed this all the more, and with trepidation,because of the divine gloom and silence wherein dwelt the unseenParaclete, Whose symbols were a dove and a mighty wind, to sin againstWhom was a sin beyond forgiveness, the eternal mysterious secret Beingto Whom, as God, the priests offered up mass once a year, robed in thescarlet of the tongues of fire.The imagery through which the nature and kinship of the Three Personsof the Trinity were darkly shadowed forth in the books of devotionwhich he read--the Father contemplating from all eternity as in amirror His Divine Perfections and thereby begetting eternally theEternal Son and the Holy Spirit proceeding out of Father and Son fromall eternity--were easier of acceptance by his mind by reason of theiraugust incomprehensibility than was the simple fact that God had lovedhis soul from all eternity, for ages before he had been born into theworld, for ages before the world itself had existed.He had heard the names of the passions of love and hate pronouncedsolemnly on the stage and in the pulpit, had found them set forthsolemnly in books and had wondered why his soul was unable to harbourthem for any time or to force his lips to utter their names withconviction. A brief anger had often invested him but he had never beenable to make it an abiding passion and had always felt himself passingout of it as if his very body were being divested with ease of someouter skin or peel. He had felt a subtle, dark, and murmurous presencepenetrate his being and fire him with a brief iniquitous lust: it, too,had slipped beyond his grasp leaving his mind lucid and indifferent.This, it seemed, was the only love and that the only hate his soulwould harbour.But he could no longer disbelieve in the reality of love, since GodHimself had loved his individual soul with divine love from alleternity. Gradually, as his soul was enriched with spiritual knowledge,he saw the whole world forming one vast symmetrical expression of God'spower and love. Life became a divine gift for every moment andsensation of which, were it even the sight of a single leaf hanging onthe twig of a tree, his soul should praise and thank the Giver. Theworld for all its solid substance and complexity no longer existed forhis soul save as a theorem of divine power and love and universality.So entire and unquestionable was this sense of the divine meaning inall nature granted to his soul that he could scarcely understand why itwas in any way necessary that he should continue to live. Yet that waspart of the divine purpose and he dared not question its use, he aboveall others who had sinned so deeply and so foully against the divinepurpose. Meek and abased by this consciousness of the one eternalomnipresent perfect reality his soul took up again her burden ofpieties, masses and prayers and sacraments and mortifications, and onlythen for the first time since he had brooded on the great mystery oflove did he feel within him a warm movement like that of some newlyborn life or virtue of the soul itself. The attitude of rapture insacred art, the raised and parted hands, the parted lips and eyes as ofone about to swoon, became for him an image of the soul in prayer,humiliated and faint before her Creator.But he had been forewarned of the dangers of spiritual exaltation anddid not allow himself to desist from even the least or lowliestdevotion, striving also by constant mortification to undo the sinfulpast rather than to achieve a saintliness fraught with peril. Each ofhis senses was brought under a rigorous discipline. In order to mortifythe sense of sight he made it his rule to walk in the street withdowncast eyes, glancing neither to right nor left and never behind him.His eyes shunned every encounter with the eyes of women. From time totime also he balked them by a sudden effort of the will, as by liftingthem suddenly in the middle of an unfinished sentence and closing thebook. To mortify his hearing he exerted no control over his voice whichwas then breaking, neither sang nor whistled, and made no attempt toflee from noises which caused him painful nervous irritation such asthe sharpening of knives on the knife board, the gathering of cinderson the fire-shovel and the twigging of the carpet. To mortify his smellwas more difficult as he found in himself no instinctive repugnance tobad odours whether they were the odours of the outdoor world, such asthose of dung or tar, or the odours of his own person among which hehad made many curious comparisons and experiments. He found in the endthat the only odour against which his sense of smell revolted was acertain stale fishy stink like that of long-standing urine; andwhenever it was possible he subjected himself to this unpleasant odour.To mortify the taste he practised strict habits at table, observed tothe letter all the fasts of the church and sought by distraction todivert his mind from the savours of different foods. But it was to themortification of touch he brought the most assiduous ingenuity ofinventiveness. He never consciously changed his position in bed, sat inthe most uncomfortable positions, suffered patiently every itch andpain, kept away from the fire, remained on his knees all through themass except at the gospels, left part of his neck and face undried sothat air might sting them and, whenever he was not saying his beads,carried his arms stiffly at his sides like a runner and never in hispockets or clasped behind him.He had no temptations to sin mortally. It surprised him however to findthat at the end of his course of intricate piety and self-restraint hewas so easily at the mercy of childish and unworthy imperfections. Hisprayers and fasts availed him little for the suppression of anger athearing his mother sneeze or at being disturbed in his devotions. Itneeded an immense effort of his will to master the impulse which urgedhim to give outlet to such irritation. Images of the outbursts oftrivial anger which he had often noted among his masters, theirtwitching mouths, close-shut lips and flushed cheeks, recurred to hismemory, discouraging him, for all his practice of humility, by thecomparison. To merge his life in the common tide of other lives washarder for him than any fasting or prayer and it was his constantfailure to do this to his own satisfaction which caused in his soul atlast a sensation of spiritual dryness together with a growth of doubtsand scruples. His soul traversed a period of desolation in which thesacraments themselves seemed to have turned into dried-up sources. Hisconfession became a channel for the escape of scrupulous and unrepentedimperfections. His actual reception of the eucharist did not bring himthe same dissolving moments of virginal self-surrender as did thosespiritual communions made by him sometimes at the close of some visitto the Blessed Sacrament. The book which he used for these visits wasan old neglected book written by saint Alphonsus Liguori, with fadingcharacters and sere foxpapered leaves. A faded world of fervent loveand virginal responses seemed to be evoked for his soul by the readingof its pages in which the imagery of the canticles was interwoven withthe communicant's prayers. An inaudible voice seemed to caress thesoul, telling her names and glories, bidding her arise as for espousaland come away, bidding her look forth, a spouse, from Amana and fromthe mountains of the leopards; and the soul seemed to answer with thesame inaudible voice, surrendering herself: INTER UBERA MEACOMMORABITUR.This idea of surrender had a perilous attraction for his mind now thathe felt his soul beset once again by the insistent voices of the fleshwhich began to murmur to him again during his prayers and meditations.It gave him an intense sense of power to know that he could, by asingle act of consent, in a moment of thought, undo all that he haddone. He seemed to feel a flood slowly advancing towards his naked feetand to be waiting for the first faint timid noiseless wavelet to touchhis fevered skin. Then, almost at the instant of that touch, almost atthe verge of sinful consent, he found himself standing far away fromthe flood upon a dry shore, saved by a sudden act of the will or asudden ejaculation; and, seeing the silver line of the flood far awayand beginning again its slow advance towards his feet, a new thrill ofpower and satisfaction shook his soul to know that he had not yieldednor undone all.When he had eluded the flood of temptation many times in this way hegrew troubled and wondered whether the grace which he had refused tolose was not being filched from him little by little. The clearcertitude of his own immunity grew dim and to it succeeded a vague fearthat his soul had really fallen unawares. It was with difficulty thathe won back his old consciousness of his state of grace by tellinghimself that he had prayed to God at every temptation and that thegrace which he had prayed for must have been given to him inasmuch asGod was obliged to give it. The very frequency and violence oftemptations showed him at last the truth of what he had heard about thetrials of the saints. Frequent and violent temptations were a proofthat the citadel of the soul had not fallen and that the devil raged tomake it fall.Often when he had confessed his doubts and scruples--some momentaryinattention at prayer, a movement of trivial anger in his soul, or asubtle wilfulness in speech or act--he was bidden by his confessor toname some sin of his past life before absolution was given him. Henamed it with humility and shame and repented of it once more. Ithumiliated and shamed him to think that he would never be freed from itwholly, however holily he might live or whatever virtues or perfectionshe might attain. A restless feeling of guilt would always be presentwith him: he would confess and repent and be absolved, confess andrepent again and be absolved again, fruitlessly. Perhaps that firsthasty confession wrung from him by the fear of hell had not been good?Perhaps, concerned only for his imminent doom, he had not had sinceresorrow for his sin? But the surest sign that his confession had beengood and that he had had sincere sorrow for his sin was, he knew, theamendment of his life.--I have amended my life, have I not? he asked himself.The director stood in the embrasure of the window, his back to thelight, leaning an elbow on the brown crossblind, and, as he spoke andsmiled, slowly dangling and looping the cord of the other blind,Stephen stood before him, following for a moment with his eyes thewaning of the long summer daylight above the roofs or the slow deftmovements of the priestly fingers. The priest's face was in totalshadow, but the waning daylight from behind him touched the deeplygrooved temples and the curves of the skull.Stephen followed also with his ears the accents and intervals of thepriest's voice as he spoke gravely and cordially of indifferent themes,the vacation which had just ended, the colleges of the order abroad,the transference of masters. The grave and cordial voice went on easilywith its tale and in the pauses Stephen felt bound to set it on againwith respectful questions. He knew that the tale was a prelude and hismind waited for the sequel. Ever since the message of summons had comefor him from the director his mind had struggled to find the meaning ofthe message; and, during the long restless time he had sat in thecollege parlour waiting for the director to come in, his eyes hadwandered from one sober picture to another around the walls and hismind wandered from one guess to another until the meaning of thesummons had almost become clear. Then, just as he was wishing that someunforeseen cause might prevent the director from coming, he had heardthe handle of the door turning and the swish of a soutane.The director had begun to speak of the dominican and franciscan ordersand of the friendship between saint Thomas and saint Bonaventure. Thecapuchin dress, he thought, was rather too...Stephen's face gave back the priest's indulgent smile and, not beinganxious to give an opinion, he made a slight dubitative movement withhis lips.--I believe, continued the director, that there is some talk now amongthe capuchins themselves of doing away with it and following theexample of the other franciscans.--I suppose they would retain it in the cloisters? said Stephen.--O certainly, said the director. For the cloister it is all right butfor the street I really think it would be better to do away with it,don't you?--It must be troublesome, I imagine.--Of course it is, of course. Just imagine when I was in Belgium Iused to see them out cycling in all kinds of weather with this thing upabout their knees! It was really ridiculous. LES JUPES, they call themin Belgium.The vowel was so modified as to be indistinct.--What do they call them?--LES JUPES.--O!Stephen smiled again in answer to the smile which he could not see onthe priest's shadowed face, its image or spectre only passing rapidlyacross his mind as the low discreet accent fell upon his ear. He gazedcalmly before him at the waning sky, glad of the cool of the eveningand of the faint yellow glow which hid the tiny flame kindling upon hischeek.The names of articles of dress worn by women or of certain soft anddelicate stuffs used in their making brought always to his mind adelicate and sinful perfume. As a boy he had imagined the reins bywhich horses are driven as slender silken bands and it shocked him tofeel at Stradbrooke the greasy leather of harness. It had shocked him,too, when he had felt for the first time beneath his tremulous fingersthe brittle texture of a woman's stocking for, retaining nothing of allhe read save that which seemed to him an echo or a prophecy of his ownstate, it was only amid soft-worded phrases or within rose-soft stuffsthat he dared to conceive of the soul or body of a woman moving withtender life.But the phrase on the priest's lips was disingenuous for he knew that apriest should not speak lightly on that theme. The phrase had beenspoken lightly with design and he felt that his face was being searchedby the eyes in the shadow. Whatever he had heard or read of the craftof jesuits he had put aside frankly as not borne out by his ownexperience. His masters, even when they had not attracted him,had seemed to him always intelligent and serious priests,athletic and high-spirited prefects. He thought of them as menwho washed their bodies briskly with cold water and wore clean coldlinen. During all the years he had lived among them in Clongowes and inBelvedere he had received only two pandies and, though these had beendealt him in the wrong, he knew that he had often escaped punishment.During all those years he had never heard from any of his masters aflippant word: it was they who had taught him christian doctrine andurged him to live a good life and, when he had fallen into grievoussin, it was they who had led him back to grace. Their presence had madehim diffident of himself when he was a muff in Clongowes and it had madehim diffident of himself also while he had held his equivocal positionin Belvedere. A constant sense of this had remained with him up to thelast year of his school life. He had never once disobeyed or allowedturbulent companions to seduce him from his habit of quiet obedience;and, even when he doubted some statement of a master, he had neverpresumed to doubt openly. Lately some of their judgements had sounded alittle childish in his ears and had made him feel a regret and pity asthough he were slowly passing out of an accustomed world and werehearing its language for the last time. One day when some boys hadgathered round a priest under the shed near the chapel, he had heardthe priest say:--I believe that Lord Macaulay was a man who probably never committeda mortal sin in his life, that is to say, a deliberate mortal sin.Some of the boys had then asked the priest if Victor Hugo were not thegreatest French writer. The priest had answered that Victor Hugo hadnever written half so well when he had turned against the church as hehad written when he was a catholic.--But there are many eminent French critics, said the priest, whoconsider that even Victor Hugo, great as he certainly was, had not sopure a French style as Louis Veuillot.The tiny flame which the priest's allusion had kindled upon Stephen'scheek had sunk down again and his eyes were still fixed calmly on thecolourless sky. But an unresting doubt flew hither and thither beforehis mind. Masked memories passed quickly before him: he recognizedscenes and persons yet he was conscious that he had failed to perceivesome vital circumstance in them. He saw himself walking about thegrounds watching the sports in Clongowes and eating slim jim out of hiscricket cap. Some jesuits were walking round the cycle-track in thecompany of ladies. The echoes of certain expressions used in Clongowessounded in remote caves of his mind.His ears were listening to these distant echoes amid the silence of theparlour when he became aware that the priest was addressing him in adifferent voice.--I sent for you today, Stephen, because I wished to speak to you on avery important subject.--Yes, sir.--Have you ever felt that you had a vocation?Stephen parted his lips to answer yes and then withheld the wordsuddenly. The priest waited for the answer and added:--I mean, have you ever felt within yourself, in your soul, a desireto join the order? Think.--I have sometimes thought of it, said Stephen.The priest let the blindcord fall to one side and, uniting his hands,leaned his chin gravely upon them, communing with himself.--In a college like this, he said at length, there is one boy or perhapstwo or three boys whom God calls to the religious life. Such a boy ismarked off from his companions by his piety, by the good example heshows to others. He is looked up to by them; he is chosen perhaps asprefect by his fellow sodalists. And you, Stephen, have been such a boyin this college, prefect of Our Blessed Lady's sodality. Perhaps youare the boy in this college whom God designs to call to Himself.A strong note of pride reinforcing the gravity of the priest's voicemade Stephen's heart quicken in response.To receive that call, Stephen, said the priest, is the greatest honourthat the Almighty God can bestow upon a man. No king or emperor on thisearth has the power of the priest of God. No angel or archangel inheaven, no saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself, has the power ofa priest of God: the power of the keys, the power to bind and to loosefrom sin, the power of exorcism, the power to cast out from thecreatures of God the evil spirits that have power over them; the power,the authority, to make the great God of Heaven come down upon the altarand take the form of bread and wine. What an awful power, Stephen!A flame began to flutter again on Stephen's cheek as he heard in thisproud address an echo of his own proud musings. How often had he seenhimself as a priest wielding calmly and humbly the awful powerof which angels and saints stood in reverence! His soul had lovedto muse in secret on this desire. He had seen himself, a youngand silent-mannered priest, entering a confessional swiftly,ascending the altarsteps, incensing, genuflecting, accomplishingthe vague acts of the priesthood which pleased him by reason oftheir semblance of reality and of their distance from it. In thatdim life which he had lived through in his musings he hadassumed the voices and gestures which he had noted with variouspriests. He had bent his knee sideways like such a one, he hadshaken the thurible only slightly like such a one, his chasuble hadswung open like that of such another as he turned to the altar againafter having blessed the people. And above all it had pleased him tofill the second place in those dim scenes of his imagining. He shrankfrom the dignity of celebrant because it displeased him to imagine thatall the vague pomp should end in his own person or that the ritualshould assign to him so clear and final an office. He longed for theminor sacred offices, to be vested with the tunicle of subdeacon athigh mass, to stand aloof from the altar, forgotten by the people, hisshoulders covered with a humeral veil, holding the paten within itsfolds or, when the sacrifice had been accomplished, to stand as deaconin a dalmatic of cloth of gold on the step below the celebrant, hishands joined and his face towards the people, and sing the chant ITEMISSA EST. If ever he had seen himself celebrant it was as in thepictures of the mass in his child's massbook, in a church withoutworshippers, save for the angel of the sacrifice, at a bare altar, andserved by an acolyte scarcely more boyish than himself. In vaguesacrificial or sacramental acts alone his will seemed drawn to go forthto encounter reality; and it was partly the absence of an appointedrite which had always constrained him to inaction whether he hadallowed silence to cover his anger or pride or had suffered only anembrace he longed to give.He listened in reverent silence now to the priest's appeal and throughthe words he heard even more distinctly a voice bidding him approach,offering him secret knowledge and secret power. He would know then whatwas the sin of Simon Magus and what the sin against the Holy Ghost forwhich there was no forgiveness. He would know obscure things, hiddenfrom others, from those who were conceived and born children of wrath.He would know the sins, the sinful longings and sinful thoughts andsinful acts, of others, hearing them murmured into his ears in theconfessional under the shame of a darkened chapel by the lips of womenand of girls; but rendered immune mysteriously at his ordination by theimposition of hands, his soul would pass again uncontaminated to thewhite peace of the altar. No touch of sin would linger upon the handswith which he would elevate and break the host; no touch of sin wouldlinger on his lips in prayer to make him eat and drink damnation tohimself not discerning the body of the Lord. He would hold his secretknowledge and secret power, being as sinless as the innocent, and hewould be a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedec.--I will offer up my mass tomorrow morning, said the director, thatAlmighty God may reveal to you His holy will. And let you, Stephen,make a novena to your holy patron saint, the first martyr, who is verypowerful with God, that God may enlighten your mind. But you must bequite sure, Stephen, that you have a vocation because it would beterrible if you found afterwards that you had none. Once a priestalways a priest, remember. Your catechism tells you that the sacramentof Holy Orders is one of those which can be received only once becauseit imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark which can never beeffaced. It is before you must weigh well, not after. It is a solemnquestion, Stephen, because on it may depend the salvation of youreternal soul. But we will pray to God together.He held open the heavy hall door and gave his hand as if already to acompanion in the spiritual life. Stephen passed out on to the wideplatform above the steps and was conscious of the caress of mildevening air. Towards Findlater's church a quartet of young men werestriding along with linked arms, swaying their heads and stepping tothe agile melody of their leader's concertina. The music passed in aninstant, as the first bars of sudden music always did, over thefantastic fabrics of his mind, dissolving them painlessly andnoiselessly as a sudden wave dissolves the sand-built turrets ofchildren. Smiling at the trivial air he raised his eyes to the priest'sface and, seeing in it a mirthless reflection of the sunken day,detached his hand slowly which had acquiesced faintly in thecompanionship.As he descended the steps the impression which effaced his troubledself-communion was that of a mirthless mask reflecting a sunken dayfrom the threshold of the college. The shadow, then, of the life of thecollege passed gravely over his consciousness. It was a grave andordered and passionless life that awaited him, a life without materialcares. He wondered how he would pass the first night in the novitiateand with what dismay he would wake the first morning in the dormitory.The troubling odour of the long corridors of Clongowes came back to himand he heard the discreet murmur of the burning gasflames. At once fromevery part of his being unrest began to irradiate. A feverishquickening of his pulses followed, and a din of meaningless words drovehis reasoned thoughts hither and thither confusedly. His lungs dilatedand sank as if he were inhaling a warm moist unsustaining air and hesmelt again the moist warm air which hung in the bath in Clongowesabove the sluggish turf-coloured water.Some instinct, waking at these memories, stronger than education orpiety, quickened within him at every near approach to that life, aninstinct subtle and hostile, and armed him against acquiescence. Thechill and order of the life repelled him. He saw himself rising in thecold of the morning and filing down with the others to early mass andtrying vainly to struggle with his prayers against the faintingsickness of his stomach. He saw himself sitting at dinner with thecommunity of a college. What, then, had become of that deep-rootedshyness of his which had made him loth to eat or drink under a strangeroof? What had come of the pride of his spirit which had always madehim conceive himself as a being apart in every order?The Reverend Stephen Dedalus, S.J.His name in that new life leaped into characters before his eyes and toit there followed a mental sensation of an undefined face or colour ofa face. The colour faded and became strong like a changing glow ofpallid brick red. Was it the raw reddish glow he had so often seen onwintry mornings on the shaven gills of the priests? The face waseyeless and sour-favoured and devout, shot with pink tinges ofsuffocated anger. Was it not a mental spectre of the face of one of thejesuits whom some of the boys called Lantern Jaws and others FoxyCampbell?He was passing at that moment before the jesuit house in GardinerStreet and wondered vaguely which window would be his if he ever joinedthe order. Then he wondered at the vagueness of his wonder, at theremoteness of his own soul from what he had hitherto imagined hersanctuary, at the frail hold which so many years of order and obediencehad of him when once a definite and irrevocable act of his threatenedto end for ever, in time and in eternity, his freedom. The voice of thedirector urging upon him the proud claims of the church and the mysteryand power of the priestly office repeated itself idly in his memory.His soul was not there to hear and greet it and he knew now that theexhortation he had listened to had already fallen into an idle formaltale. He would never swing the thurible before the tabernacle as priest.His destiny was to be elusive of social or religious orders. The wisdom ofthe priest's appeal did not touch him to the quick. He was destined tolearn his own wisdom apart from others or to learn the wisdom of othershimself wandering among the snares of the world.The snares of the world were its ways of sin. He would fall. He had notyet fallen but he would fall silently, in an instant. Not to fall wastoo hard, too hard; and he felt the silent lapse of his soul, as itwould be at some instant to come, falling, falling, but not yet fallen,still unfallen, but about to fall.He crossed the bridge over the stream of the Tolka and turned his eyescoldly for an instant towards the faded blue shrine of the BlessedVirgin which stood fowl-wise on a pole in the middle of a ham-shapedencampment of poor cottages. Then, bending to the left, he followed thelane which led up to his house. The faint Sour stink of rotted cabbagescame towards him from the kitchen gardens on the rising ground abovethe river. He smiled to think that it was this disorder, the misruleand confusion of his father's house and the stagnation of vegetablelife, which was to win the day in his soul. Then a short laugh brokefrom his lips as he thought of that solitary farmhand in the kitchengardens behind their house whom they had nicknamed the man with thehat. A second laugh, taking rise from the first after a pause, brokefrom him involuntarily as he thought of how the man with the hatworked, considering in turn the four points of the sky and thenregretfully plunging his spade in the earth.He pushed open the latchless door of the porch and passed through thenaked hallway into the kitchen. A group of his brothers and sisters wassitting round the table. Tea was nearly over and only the last of thesecond watered tea remained in the bottoms of the small glass jars andjampots which did service for teacups. Discarded crusts and lumps ofsugared bread, turned brown by the tea which had been poured over them,lay scattered on the table. Little wells of tea lay here and there onthe board, and a knife with a broken ivory handle was stuck through thepith of a ravaged turnover.The sad quiet grey-blue glow of the dying day came through the windowand the open door, covering over and allaying quietly a sudden instinctof remorse in Stephen's heart. All that had been denied them had beenfreely given to him, the eldest; but the quiet glow of evening showedhim in their faces no sign of rancour.He sat near them at the table and asked where his father and motherwere. One answered:--Goneboro toboro lookboro atboro aboro houseboro.Still another removal! A boy named Fallon in Belvedere had often askedhim with a silly laugh why they moved so often. A frown of scorndarkened quickly his forehead as he heard again the silly laugh of thequestioner.He asked:--Why are we on the move again if it's a fair question?--Becauseboro theboro landboro lordboro willboro putboro usboro outboro.The voice of his youngest brother from the farther side of thefireplace began to sing the air OFT IN THE STILLY NIGHT. One by one theothers took up the air until a full choir of voices was singing. Theywould sing so for hours, melody after melody, glee after glee, till thelast pale light died down on the horizon, till the first dark nightclouds came forth and night fell.He waited for some moments, listening, before he too took up the airwith them. He was listening with pain of spirit to the overtone ofweariness behind their frail fresh innocent voices. Even before theyset out on life's journey they seemed weary already of the way.He heard the choir of voices in the kitchen echoed and multipliedthrough an endless reverberation of the choirs of endless generationsof children and heard in all the echoes an echo also of the recurringnote of weariness and pain. All seemed weary of life even beforeentering upon it. And he remembered that Newman had heard this notealso in the broken lines of Virgil, GIVING UTTERANCE, LIKE THE VOICE OFNATURE HERSELF, TO THAT PAIN AND WEARINESS YET HOPE OF BETTER THINGSWHICH HAS BEEN THE EXPERIENCE OF HER CHILDREN IN EVERY TIME.He could wait no longer.From the door of Byron's public-house to the gate of Clontarf Chapel,from the gate of Clontail Chapel to the door of Byron's public-houseand then back again to the chapel and then back again to the public-househe had paced slowly at first, planting his steps scrupulously inthe spaces of the patchwork of the footpath, then timing their fall tothe fall of verses. A full hour had passed since his father had gone inwith Dan Crosby, the tutor, to find out for him something about theuniversity. For a full hour he had paced up and down, waiting: but hecould wait no longer.He set off abruptly for the Bull, walking rapidly lest his father'sshrill whistle might call him back; and in a few moments he had roundedthe curve at the police barrack and was safe.Yes, his mother was hostile to the idea, as he had read from herlistless silence. Yet her mistrust pricked him more keenly than hisfather's pride and he thought coldly how he had watched the faith whichwas fading down in his soul ageing and strengthening in her eyes. A dimantagonism gathered force within him and darkened his mind as a cloudagainst her disloyalty and when it passed, cloud-like, leaving his mindserene and dutiful towards her again, he was made aware dimly andwithout regret of a first noiseless sundering of their lives.The university! So he had passed beyond the challenge of the sentrieswho had stood as guardians of his boyhood and had sought to keep himamong them that he might be subject to them and serve their ends. Prideafter satisfaction uplifted him like long slow waves. The end he hadbeen born to serve yet did not see had led him to escape by an unseenpath and now it beckoned to him once more and a new adventure was aboutto be opened to him. It seemed to him that he heard notes of fitfulmusic leaping upwards a tone and downwards a diminished fourth, upwardsa tone and downwards a major third, like triple-branching flamesleaping fitfully, flame after flame, out of a midnight wood. It was anelfin prelude, endless and formless; and, as it grew wilder and faster,the flames leaping out of time, he seemed to hear from under the boughsand grasses wild creatures racing, their feet pattering like rain uponthe leaves. Their feet passed in pattering tumult over his mind, thefeet of hares and rabbits, the feet of harts and hinds and antelopes,until he heard them no more and remembered only a proud cadence fromNewman:--Whose feet are as the feet of harts and underneath the everlasting arms.The pride of that dim image brought back to his mind the dignity of theoffice he had refused. All through his boyhood he had mused upon thatwhich he had so often thought to be his destiny and when the moment hadcome for him to obey the call he had turned aside, obeying a waywardinstinct. Now time lay between: the oils of ordination would neveranoint his body. He had refused. Why?He turned seaward from the road at Dollymount and as he passed on tothe thin wooden bridge he felt the planks shaking with the tramp ofheavily shod feet. A squad of christian brothers was on its way backfrom the Bull and had begun to pass, two by two, across the bridge.Soon the whole bridge was trembling and resounding. The uncouth facespassed him two by two, stained yellow or red or livid by the sea, and,as he strove to look at them with ease and indifference, a faint stainof personal shame and commiseration rose to his own face. Angry withhimself he tried to hide his face from their eyes by gazing downsideways into the shallow swirling water under the bridge but he stillsaw a reflection therein of their top-heavy silk hats and humbletape-like collars and loosely-hanging clerical clothes.--Brother Hickey.

　　Brother Quaid.

　　Brother MacArdle.

　　Brother Keogh.--

　　Their piety would be like their names, like their faces, like theirclothes, and it was idle for him to tell himself that their humble andcontrite hearts, it might be, paid a far richer tribute of devotionthan his had ever been, a gift tenfold more acceptable than hiselaborate adoration. It was idle for him to move himself to be generoustowards them, to tell himself that if he ever came to their gates,stripped of his pride, beaten and in beggar's weeds, that they would begenerous towards him, loving him as themselves. Idle and embittering,finally, to argue, against his own dispassionate certitude, that thecommandment of love bade us not to love our neighbour as ourselves withthe same amount and intensity of love but to love him as ourselves withthe same kind of love.He drew forth a phrase from his treasure and spoke it softly tohimself:--A day of dappled seaborne clouds.The phrase and the day and the scene harmonized in a chord. Words. Wasit their colours? He allowed them to glow and fade, hue after hue:sunrise gold, the russet and green of apple orchards, azure of waves,the grey-fringed fleece of clouds. No, it was not their colours: it wasthe poise and balance of the period itself. Did he then love therhythmic rise and fall of words better than their associations oflegend and colour? Or was it that, being as weak of sight as he was shyof mind, he drew less pleasure from the reflection of the glowingsensible world through the prism of a language many-coloured and richlystoried than from the contemplation of an inner world of individualemotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose?He passed from the trembling bridge on to firm land again. At thatinstant, as it seemed to him, the air was chilled and, looking askancetowards the water, he saw a flying squall darkening and crispingsuddenly the tide. A faint click at his heart, a faint throb in histhroat told him once more of how his flesh dreaded the cold infrahumanodour of the sea; yet he did not strike across the downs on his leftbut held straight on along the spine of rocks that pointed against theriver's mouth.A veiled sunlight lit up faintly the grey sheet of water where theriver was embayed. In the distance along the course of the slow-flowingLiffey slender masts flecked the sky and, more distant still, the dimfabric of the city lay prone in haze. Like a scene on some vague arras,old as man's weariness, the image of the seventh city of christendomwas visible to him across the timeless air, no older nor more weary norless patient of subjection than in the days of the thingmote.Disheartened, he raised his eyes towards the slow-drifting clouds,dappled and seaborne. They were voyaging across the deserts of the sky,a host of nomads on the march, voyaging high over Ireland, westwardbound. The Europe they had come from lay out there beyond the IrishSea, Europe of strange tongues and valleyed and woodbegirt andcitadelled and of entrenched and marshalled races. He heard a confusedmusic within him as of memories and names which he was almost consciousof but could not capture even for an instant; then the music seemed torecede, to recede, to recede, and from each receding trail of nebulousmusic there fell always one longdrawn calling note, piercing like astar the dusk of silence. Again! Again! Again! A voice from beyond theworld was calling.--Hello, Stephanos!--Here comes The Dedalus!--Ao!... Eh, give it over, Dwyer, I'm telling you, or I'll give you a stuffin the kisser for yourself... Ao!--Good man, Towser! Duck him!--Come along, Dedalus! Bous Stephanoumenos! Bous Stephaneforos!--Duck him! Guzzle him now, Towser!--Help! Help!... Ao!He recognized their speech collectively before he distinguished theirfaces. The mere sight of that medley of wet nakedness chilled him tothe bone. Their bodies, corpse-white or suffused with a pallid goldenlight or rawly tanned by the sun, gleamed with the wet of the sea.Their diving-stone, poised on its rude supports and rocking under theirplunges, and the rough-hewn stones of the sloping breakwater over whichthey scrambled in their horseplay gleamed with cold wet lustre. Thetowels with which they smacked their bodies were heavy with coldseawater; and drenched with cold brine was their matted hair.He stood still in deference to their calls and parried their banterwith easy words. How characterless they looked: Shuley without his deepunbuttoned collar, Ennis without his scarlet belt with the snaky clasp,and Connolly without his Norfolk coat with the flapless side-pockets!It was a pain to see them, and a sword-like pain to see the signs ofadolescence that made repellent their pitiable nakedness. Perhaps theyhad taken refuge in number and noise from the secret dread in theirsouls. But he, apart from them and in silence, remembered in what dreadhe stood of the mystery of his own body.--Stephanos Dedalos! Bous Stephanoumenos! Bous Stephaneforos!Their banter was not new to him and now it flattered his mild proudsovereignty. Now, as never before, his strange name seemed to him aprophecy. So timeless seemed the grey warm air, so fluid and impersonalhis own mood, that all ages were as one to him. A moment before theghost of the ancient kingdom of the Danes had looked forth through thevesture of the hazewrapped City. Now, at the name of the fabulousartificer, he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see a wingedform flying above the waves and slowly climbing the air. What did itmean? Was it a quaint device opening a page of some medieval book ofprophecies and symbols, a hawk-like man flying sunward above the sea, aprophecy of the end he had been born to serve and had been followingthrough the mists of childhood and boyhood, a symbol of the artistforging anew in his workshop out of the sluggish matter of the earth anew soaring impalpable imperishable being?His heart trembled; his breath came faster and a wild spirit passedover his limbs as though he was soaring sunward. His heart trembled inan ecstasy of fear and his soul was in flight. His soul was soaring inan air beyond the world and the body he knew was purified in a breathand delivered of incertitude and made radiant and commingled with theelement of the spirit. An ecstasy of flight made radiant his eyes andwild his breath and tremulous and wild and radiant his windswept limbs.--One! Two!... Look out!--Oh, Cripes, I'm drownded!--One! Two! Three and away!--The next! The next!--One!... UK!--Stephaneforos!His throat ached with a desire to cry aloud, the cry of a hawk or eagleon high, to cry piercingly of his deliverance to the winds. This wasthe call of life to his soul not the dull gross voice of the world ofduties and despair, not the inhuman voice that had called him to thepale service of the altar. An instant of wild flight had delivered himand the cry of triumph which his lips withheld cleft his brain.--Stephaneforos!What were they now but cerements shaken from the body of death--thefear he had walked in night and day, the incertitude that had ringedhim round, the shame that had abased him within and without--cerements,the linens of the grave?His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning hergrave-clothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of thefreedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name hebore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable,imperishable.He started up nervously from the stone-block for he could no longerquench the flame in his blood. He felt his cheeks aflame and his throatthrobbing with song. There was a lust of wandering in his feet thatburned to set out for the ends of the earth. On! On! his heart seemedto cry. Evening would deepen above the sea, night fall upon the plains,dawn glimmer before the wanderer and show him strange fields and hillsand faces. Where?He looked northward towards Howth. The sea had fallen below the line ofseawrack on the shallow side of the breakwater and already the tide wasrunning out fast along the foreshore. Already one long oval bank ofsand lay warm and dry amid the wavelets. Here and there warm isles ofsand gleamed above the shallow tide and about the isles and around thelong bank and amid the shallow currents of the beach were lightcladfigures, wading and delving.In a few moments he was barefoot, his stockings folded in his pocketsand his canvas shoes dangling by their knotted laces over his shouldersand, picking a pointed salt-eaten stick out of the jetsam among therocks, he clambered down the slope of the breakwater.There was a long rivulet in the strand and, as he waded slowly up itscourse, he wondered at the endless drift of seaweed. Emerald and blackand russet and olive, it moved beneath the current, swaying andturning. The water of the rivulet was dark with endless drift andmirrored the high-drifting clouds. The clouds were drifting above himsilently and silently the seatangle was drifting below him and the greywarm air was still and a new wild life was singing in his veins.Where was his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung back fromher destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds and in herhouse of squalor and subterfuge to queen it in faded cerements and inwreaths that withered at the touch? Or where was he?He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart oflife. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid awaste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells andtangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures ofchildren and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out tosea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of astrange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicateas a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed hadfashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller andsoft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the whitefringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Herslate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailedbehind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and softas the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair wasgirlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, herface.She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt hispresence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quietsufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long shesuffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bentthem towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hitherand thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke thesilence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep;hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled onher cheek.--Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy.He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. Hischeeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. Onand on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildlyto the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him.Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken theholy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul hadleaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreatelife out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortalyouth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw openbefore him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of errorand glory. On and on and on and on!He halted suddenly and heard his heart in the silence. How far had hewalked? What hour was it?There was no human figure near him nor any sound borne to him over theair. But the tide was near the turn and already the day was on thewane. He turned landward and ran towards the shore and, running up thesloping beach, reckless of the sharp shingle, found a sandy nook amid aring of tufted sandknolls and lay down there that the peace and silenceof the evening might still the riot of his blood.He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes ofthe heavenly bodies; and the earth beneath him, the earth that hadborne him, had taken him to her breast.He closed his eyes in the languor of sleep. His eyelids trembled as ifthey felt the vast cyclic movement of the earth and her watchers,trembled as if they felt the strange light of some new world. His soulwas swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as undersea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or aflower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breakinglight, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself,breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leafby leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavenswith its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other.Evening had fallen when he woke and the sand and arid grasses of hisbed glowed no longer. He rose slowly and, recalling the rapture of hissleep, sighed at its joy.He climbed to the crest of the sandhill and gazed about him. Eveninghad fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of skyline,the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand; and the tide wasflowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islandinga few last figures in distant pools.