The Wisdom of Authority — Ulysses

Stephen stands in Mr Deasy's schoolroom and tries to get Pyrrhus into the boys. Cochrane reaches Tarentum and a battle, then loses the place. Stephen supplies Asculum from the scarred book, and the sentence the world kept: another victory like that and we are done for. Armstrong, figrolls in his satchel, hears a pier instead of a king, and the class laughs the thin laugh of boys who know the fees their fathers pay. A riddle fares no better. The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush is the answer, and their dismay is the only thing that lands. A stick strikes the door. Hockey. They go. Only Sargent stays, tangled hair, weak eyes, a damp ink stain on his cheek, holding out the sums Mr Deasy told him to write again.

He cannot do them. Stephen feels the ugliness of the neck and then the fact that someone loved that weak blood, or the world would have trampled it. The thought brings his own mother back, a twig burnt in the fire. He sits at the boy's side and works the sum. Sargent copies the figures in long shaky strokes and runs when his name is called from the field. Deasy comes off the grass with an angry white moustache, shouting what is it now without listening, until Stephen tells him Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side. Wait in the study, Deasy says, and goes back to restore order.

The study smells of stale smoke and old leather. Deasy counts three pounds twelve out of his savings box, sovereigns and crowns and shillings, and tells Stephen not to carry it loose. Buy one of those handy machines. Stephen says his would often be empty. There is also a letter for the press, foot and mouth disease, and Deasy wants it printed before the next outbreak puts an embargo on Irish cattle. Stephen takes the two copies. Then the forefinger beats the air. England, Deasy says, is in the hands of the Jews. Stephen answers that a merchant buys cheap and sells dear, Jew or gentile, and that he fears the big words that make them unhappy. History, he says, is a nightmare from which he is trying to awake. A shout from the playfield is God, if God is the goal Deasy means. At the gate the old man runs him down, breathing hard, to add one joke. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the Jews. Do you know why? Because she never let them in. He laughs, coughs, and stamps back over the gravel. On his wise shoulders, through the checkerwork of leaves, the sun flung spangles, dancing coins.