ic of any kind.

He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen,
image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual handsome
blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering after as
he was perhaps not that way built.

Still, supposing he had his father's gift as he more than suspected,
it opened up new vistas in his mind such as Lady Fingall's Irish
industries, concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in general.

Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air _Youth here has
End_ by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows
come from. Even more he liked an old German song of _Johannes Jeep_
about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men,
which boggled Bloom a bit:

_Von der Sirenen Listigkeit
Tun die Poeten dichten._

These opening bars he sang and translated _extempore_. Bloom, nodding,
said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all means which
he did.

A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons,
which Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could easily,
if properly handled by some recognised authority on voice production
such as Barraclough and being able to read music into the bargain,
command its own price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for
its fortunate possessor in the near future an _entree_ into fashionable
houses in the best residential quarters of financial magnates in a large
way of business and titled people where with his university degree of
B. A. (a huge ad in its way) and gentlemanly bearing to all the more
influence the good impression he would infallibly score a distinct
success, being blessed with brains which also could be utilised for the
purpose and other requisites, if his clothes were properly attended
to so as to the better worm his way into their good graces as he, a
youthful tyro in--society's sartorial niceties, hardly understood how a
little thing like that could militate against you. It was in fact only a
matter of months and he could easily foresee him participating in their
musical and artistic _conversaziones_ during the festivities of the
Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes
of the fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation,
cases of which, as he happened to know, were on record--in fact, without
giving the show away, he himself once upon a time, i