as it, as he
might very easily have picked up the details from some pal on board ship
and then, when got up to tally with the description given, introduce
himself with: _Excuse me, my name is So and So_ or some such commonplace
remark. A more prudent course, as Bloom said to the not over effusive,
in fact like the distinguished personage under discussion beside him,
would have been to sound the lie of the land first.

--That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor
commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.

--Fine lump of a woman all the same, the _soi-disant_ townclerk Henry
Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man's thighs.
I seen her picture in a barber's. The husband was a captain or an
officer.

--Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a cottonball one.

This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair
amount of laughter among his _entourage_. As regards Bloom he, without
the faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of
the door and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused
extraordinary interest at the time when the facts, to make matters
worse, were made public with the usual affectionate letters that passed
between them full of sweet nothings. First it was strictly Platonic till
nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them till bit by
bit matters came to a climax and the matter became the talk of the town
till the staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not a few
evildisposed, however, who were resolved upon encompassing his downfall
though the thing was public property all along though not to anything
like the sensational extent that it subsequently blossomed into. Since
their names were coupled, though, since he was her declared favourite,
where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the rank and file
from the housetops, the fact, namely, that he had shared her bedroom
which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the
packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses
swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in
the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance
of a ladder in night apparel, having gained admittance in the same
fashion, a fact the weeklies, addicted to the lubric a little, simply
coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was
it was simply a