ey. You'll look spiffing in them. I'm not joking, Kinch. You
look damn well when you're dressed.
--Thanks, Stephen said. I can't wear them if they are grey.
--He can't wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey
trousers.
He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the
smooth skin.
Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its
smokeblue mobile eyes.
--That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan,
says you have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Connolly Norman. General
paralysis of the insane!
He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad
in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and
the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong
wellknit trunk.
--Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by
a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this
face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
--I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her
all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead
him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.
Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes.
--The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If
Wilde were only alive to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:
--It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.
Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him
round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he
had thrust them.
--It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly.
God knows you have more spirit than any of them.
Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The
cold steelpen.
--Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap
downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He's stinking with money and
thinks you're not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling
jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I
could only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise
it.
Cranly's arm. His arm.
--And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'
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