to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or
wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:


--GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE! WRITE DOWN ALL I SAID
AND TELL TOM, DIEK AND HARRY I ROSE FROM THE DEAD.
WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE CANNOT FAIL ME TO FLY
AND OLIVET'S BREEZY ... GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE!


He capered before them down towards the forty-foot hole, fluttering his
winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind
that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries.

Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and
said:

--We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a
believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of
it somehow, doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?

--The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.

--O, Haines said, you have heard it before?

--Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.

--You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the
narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a
personal God.

--There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.

Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a green
stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.

--Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.

Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his
sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang
it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk
towards Stephen in the shell of his hands.

--Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or
you don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a
personal God. You don't stand for that, I suppose?

--You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible
example of free thought.

He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side.
Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My
familiar, after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along
the path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants
that key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread. Give him
the key too. All. He will ask for it. That was in his eyes.

--After all, Haines began ...

Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was not
all unkind.

--After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your
own master, it seems to me.

--I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian.

--Italian? Haines said.

A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.

--And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.

--Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?

--The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and
the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.

Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke.

--I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think
like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather
unfairly. It seems history is to blame.

The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen's memory the triumph of
their brazen bells: ET UNAM SANCTAM CATHOLICAM ET APOSTOLICAM ECCLESIAM:
the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts,
a chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope
Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and
behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and
menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry:
Photius and the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius,
warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the
Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle
African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own
Son. Words Mulligan had spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger.
Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a
menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the
church, Michael's host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with
their lances and their shields.


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