oth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other
too often heard, their land a pawnshop.

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not
been knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has
branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite
possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing
that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass?
Weave, weaver of the wind.

--Tell us a story, sir.

--O, do, sir. A ghoststory.

--Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book.

-_-Weep no more,_ Comyn said.

--Go on then, Talbot.

--And the story, sir?

--After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.

A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork
of his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text:

_--Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor..._

It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible.
Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated
out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he
had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow
a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains
about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and
in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of
brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of
thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the
soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of
forms.

Talbot repeated:

_--Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Through the dear might..._

--Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don't see anything.

--What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward.

His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having
just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these
craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and
on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the
tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long
look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the
church's looms. Ay.

_Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.
My father