0 Ulysses
—May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.
He began to scribble on a slip of paper.
Take some slips from the counter going out.
—Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said,
all save one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.
He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a
bachelor.
Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder
nightly each his variorum edition of The Taming of the
Shrew.
—You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Ste-
phen. You have brought us all this way to show us a French
triangle. Do you believe your own theory?
—No, Stephen said promptly.
—Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to
make it a dialogue, don’t you know, like the Platonic dia-
logues Wilde wrote.
John Eclecticon doubly smiled.
—Well, in that case, he said, I don’t see why you should
expect payment for it since you don’t believe it yourself.
Dowden believes there is some mystery in Hamlet but will
say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man Piper met in Berlin,
who is working up that Rutland theory, believes that the
secret is hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to
visit the present duke, Piper says, and prove to him that his
ancestor wrote the plays. It will come as a surprise to his
grace. But he believes his theory.
I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me
to believe or help me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe?