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By Root 15935 0

polo ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still. It represents a partially nude señorita, frail and lovely (his wife, as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious horsewhipping.

MRS BELLINGHAM

Me too.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

Me too.

(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.)

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

(stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of fury) I will, by the God above me. I’ll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I’ll flay him alive.

BLOOM

(his eyes closing, quails expectantly) Here? (he squirms) Again! (he pants cringing) I love the danger.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

Very much so! I’ll make it hot for you. I’ll make you dance Jack Latten for that.

MRS BELLINGHAM

Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it!

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

Disgraceful! There’s no excuse for him! A married man!

BLOOM

All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

(laughs derisively) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you’ll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury.

MRS BELLINGHAM

(shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively) Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his life. The cat-o’-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.

BLOOM

(shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien) O cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me off this once. (he offers the other cheek)

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

(severely) Don’t do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

(unbuttoning her gauntlet violently) I’ll do no such thing. Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! To dare address me! I’ll flog him black and blue in the public streets. I’ll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. (she swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the air) Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick! Ready?

BLOOM

(trembling, beginning to obey) The weather has been so warm.

(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.)

DAVY STEPHENS

Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick’s Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the cuckolds in Dublin.

(The very reverend Canon O’Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S. J. bend low.)

THE TIMEPIECE

(unportalling)

Cuckoo.

Cuckoo.

Cuckoo.

(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)

THE QUOITS

Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.

(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack Power, Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M‘Coy and the featureless face of a Nameless One.)

THE NAMELESS ONE

Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her.

THE JURORS

(all their heads turned to his voice)