l _liaison_
by plunging his knife into her, until it just struck him that
Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for the actual
perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably informed,
actually party to the ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea some
legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case that was very ancient
history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he
had transparently outlived his welcome. He ought to have either died
naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses, always farewell
positively last performance then come up smiling again. Generous to a
fault of course, temperamental, no economising or any idea of the sort,
always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So similarly he had a very
shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some l s d. in the
course of his perambulations round the docks in the congenial atmosphere
of the _Old Ireland_ tavern, come back to Erin and so on. Then as for
the other he had heard not so long before the same identical lingo as he
told Stephen how he simply but effectually silenced the offender.

--He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the
whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and
in a heated fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain facts
in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his
family like me though in reality I'm not. That was one for him. A soft
answer turns away wrath. He hadn't a word to say for himself as everyone
saw. Am I not right?

He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride
at the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to
glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly.

--_Ex quibus_, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or
four eyes conversing, _Christus_ or Bloom his name is or after all any
other, _secundum carnem_.

--Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides
of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to
right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is
though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the
government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all
very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality.
I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never
reaches anything or stops any