shade in the jesuit fathers’ church in Upper Gardiner Street, the sacred
edifice being thronged to the doors to hear her with virtuosos, or virtuosi
rather. There was the unanimous opinion that there was none to come
up to her and, suffice it to say in a place of worship for music of a sacred
character, there was a generally voiced desire for an encore. On the whole,
though favouring preferably light opera of the Don Giovanni description, and
Martha, a gem in its line, he had a penchant, though with only a surface
knowledge, for the severe classical school such as Mendelssohn. And talking
of that, taking it for granted he knew all about the old favourites, he
mentioned par excellence Lionel’s air in Martha, M’appari, which, curiously
enough, he heard, or overheard, to be more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege
he keenly appreciated, from the lips of Stephen’s respected father, sung to
perfection, a study of the number, in fact, which made all the others take a
back seat. Stephen, in reply to a politely put query, said he didn’t but launched
out into praises of Shakespeare’s songs, at least of in or about that period, the
lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter Lane near Gerard the herbalist, who anno
ludendo hausi, Doulandus, an instrument he was contemplating purchasing from
Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom Bloom did not quite recall, though the name
certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son with their
dux and comes conceits and Byrd (William), who played the virginals, he said,
in the Queen’s Chapel or anywhere else he found them and one Tomkins who
made toys or airs and John Bull.
On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond the swing chain, a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground, brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not perfectly certain whether he had caught a right the allusion to sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical names, as a striking coincidence.
By the chains, the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving, Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual plucked the other’s sleeve gently, jocosely remarking :
— Our lives are in peril to night. Beware of the steamroller.
They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite near, so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh, because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a headhanger, putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord of his creation
