red, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands
forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing
bagslops.)_

BEN DOLLARD: _(Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels
jovially in base barreltone)_ When love absorbs my ardent soul.

_(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the
ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)_

THE VIRGINS: _(Gushingly)_ Big Ben! Ben my Chree!

A VOICE: Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.

BEN DOLLARD: _(Smites his thigh in abundant laughter)_ Hold him now.

HENRY: _(Caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs)_ Thine
heart, mine love. _(He plucks his lutestrings)_ When first I saw...

VIRAG: _(Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting)_ Rats!
_(He yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an upward
push of his parchmentroll)_ After having said which I took my departure.
Farewell. Fare thee well. _Dreck!_

_(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocketcomb
and gives a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to
the door, his wild harp slung behind him. Virag reaches the door in two
ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and deftly claps sideways on the
wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head.)_

THE FLYBILL: K. II. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.

HENRY: All is lost now.

_(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)_

VIRAG'S HEAD: Quack!

_(Exeunt severally.)_

STEPHEN: _(Over his shoulder to zoe)_ You would have preferred
the fighting parson who founded the protestant error. But beware
Antisthenes, the dog sage, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. The
agony in the closet.

LYNCH: All one and the same God to her.

STEPHEN: _(Devoutly)_ And sovereign Lord of all things.

FLORRY: _(To Stephen)_ I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Or a monk.

LYNCH: He is. A cardinal's son.

STEPHEN: Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.

_(His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all Ireland,
appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals and socks. Seven
dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his train,
peeping under it. He wears a battered silk hat sideways on his head. His
thumbs are stuck in his armpits and his palms outspread. Round his
neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his breast in a corkscrew cross.
Releasing his thumbs, he invokes grace fr