Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/606

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trained by Braine so that Lenehan’s version of the business was all pure buncombe. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1,000 sovs. with 300 in specie. Also ran J. de Bremond’s (French horse Bantam Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) Maximum II. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get left. Of course, gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing though, as the event turned out, the poor fool hadn’t much reason to congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it reduced itself to eventually.

There was every indication they would arrive at that, Mr Bloom said.

Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.

One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read, Return of Parnell. He bet them what they liked.A Dublin fusilier was in that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it was killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for a time after Committee Room n° 15 until he was his old self again with no-one to point a fiinger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone down on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his senses. Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and so on.

All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels, and not singly but in their thousands, and then complete oblivion because it was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely, of course, there was even a shadow of truth in the stories and, even supposing, he thought a return highly inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his various different political arrangements were nearing completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having neglected to change his boots and clothes after a wetting when a cold resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted with his movements even before, there was absolutely no clue as to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the Alice, where art thou order even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart, so the