there all
round everything. It was very big to think about everything and
everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big
thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God's
name just as his name was Stephen. DIEU was the French for God and that
was God's name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said DIEU then
God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But,
though there were different names for God in all the different
languages in the world and God understood what all the people who
prayed said in their different languages, still God remained always the
same God and God's real name was God.

It made him very tired to think that way. It made him feel his head
very big. He turned over the flyleaf and looked wearily at the green
round earth in the middle of the maroon clouds. He wondered which was
right, to be for the green or for the maroon, because Dante had ripped
the green velvet back off the brush that was for Parnell one day with
her scissors and had told him that Parnell was a bad man. He wondered
if they were arguing at home about that. That was called politics.
There were two sides in it: Dante was on one side and his father and Mr
Casey were on the other side but his mother and uncle Charles were on
no side. Every day there was something in the paper about it.

It pained him that he did not know well what politics meant and that he
did not know where the universe ended. He felt small and weak. When
would he be like the fellows in poetry and rhetoric? They had big
voices and big boots and they studied trigonometry. That was very far
away. First came the vacation and then the next term and then vacation
again and then again another term and then again the vacation. It was
like a train going in and out of tunnels and that was like the noise of
the boys eating in the refectory when you opened and closed the flaps
of the ears. Term, vacation; tunnel, out; noise, stop. How far away it
was! It was better to go to bed to sleep. Only prayers in the chapel
and then bed. He shivered and yawned. It would be lovely in bed after
the sheets got a bit hot. First they were so cold to get into. He
shivered to think how cold they were first. But then they got hot and
then he could sleep. It was lovely to be tired. He yawned again. Night
prayers and then bed: he shivered and wanted to yawn. It would be
lovely in a few minutes. He felt a warm glow creeping up from the cold
s