shall be married to
Mary, and then!..."

He remembered what she had said to him at Boveyhayne, "I'd like you to
go, Quinny ... I can't pretend that I wouldn't...."

He stood for a while, leaning against the wall and looking out over the
crumpled sea. "I don't know," he said to himself, "I don't know!"

3

He climbed to the top of Bray Head, and while he stood there, his mind
was full of thoughts that beat backwards and forwards. In olden times,
the histories said, Ireland had sent a stream of scholars over the waste
places of Europe to fertilise them and make them fruitful. "Now," he
thought bitterly, "we send 'bosses' to Tammany Hall...."

He tried to envisage the means whereby Ireland would be brought to the
measure and the stature of a dignified and honourable nation ... "not
this brawling, whining, cadging, snivelling, Oh-Jesus-have-mercy-on-us
disorder!" and he saw only a long, tedious, painful process of
self-regeneration. "We must rise on our own wings!"

"But first we must be free, free from the bondage of history, free from
the bondage of romance, free from the bondage of politics, free from the
bondage of religion, and free from the bondage of our bellies!"

"There are four Irishmen to be conquered and controlled: the Publican,
the Priest, the Politician and the Poet...."

"We cannot be friendly with England until we are equal with England ...
but England cannot make us equal with her ... we can only do that
ourselves!"

"England is our sister ... not our mother!..."

"Catholicism is Death ... and Intolerance is Death. Wherever there is
Catholicism there is Decay that will not be stopped until the people
protest. Wherever there is Intolerance there is a waste of life, a
perversion of energy. When the Protestant ceases, and the Catholic
begins, to shout 'To Hell with the Pope,' there will be glory and life
in Ireland...."

He tried to plan a means of making a change of mind in Ireland. "We must
make opinions and active brains!" and so he saw himself urging his
friends to abandon parliaments to the middle-aged and the second-rate,
while they bent their minds to the conquest of the schools. "Let the old
men make their speeches," he said aloud as if he were addressing a
conference. "We'll mould the minds of the children!"

They must exult in service. "I believe in Work ... in the Job Well Done
... in giving oneself without ceasing ... in the holy communion of men
labouring together for something