that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own hands
and give you your quietus double quick with those poignards they carry in
the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally. My wife is,
so to speak, Spanish, half, that is. Point of fact she could actually claim Spanish
nationality if she wanted, having been born in (technically) Spain, i. e.
Gibraltar. She has the Spanish type. Quite dark, regular brunette, black. I, for
one, certainly believe climate accounts for character. That’s why I asked you if
you wrote your poetry in Italian.
— The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, were very passionate about ten shillings. Roberto ruba roba sua.
— Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed.
— Then, Stephen said, staring and rambling on to himself or some unknown listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and the isosceles triangle, Miss Portinari, he fell in love with and Leonardo and san Tommaso Mastino.
— It’s in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are washed in the blood of the sun. Coincidence, I just happened to be in the Kildare Street Museum today, shortly prior to our meeting, if I can so call it, and I was just looking at those antique statues there. The splendid proportions of hips, bosom. You simply don’t knock against those kind of women here. An exception here and there. Handsome, yes, pretty in a way you find, but what I’m talking about is the female form. Besides, they have so little taste in dress, most of them, which greatly enhances a woman’s natural beauty, no matter what you say. Rumpled stockings — it may be, possibly is, a foible of mine, but still it’s a thing I simply hate to see.
Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and the others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog, collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy, of course, had his own say to say. He had doubled the Cape a few odd times and weathered a monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all those perils of the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him, or words to that effect, a pious medal he had that saved him.
So then after that they drifted on to the wreck of Daunt’s rock, wreck of that illfated Norwegian barque — nobody could think of her name for the moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry Campbell remembered it, Palme, on Booterstown Strand, that was the talk of the town that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of original verse of distinctive merit
