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under discussion beside him, would have been to sound the
lie of the land first.
—That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the she-
been proprietor commented. She put the first nail in his
coffin.
—Fine lump of a woman all the same, the soi-disant
townclerk Henry Campbell remarked, and plenty of her.
She loosened many a man’s thighs. I seen her picture in a
barber’s. The husband was a captain or an officer.
—Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a cot-
tonball one.
This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character
occasioned a fair amount of laughter among his entourage.
As regards Bloom he, without the faintest suspicion of a
smile, merely gazed in the direction of the door and reflect-
ed upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary
interest at the time when the facts, to make matters worse,
were made public with the usual affectionate letters that
passed between them full of sweet nothings. First it was
strictly Platonic till nature intervened and an attachment
sprang up between them till bit by bit matters came to a
climax and the matter became the talk of the town till the
staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not a few
evildisposed, however, who were resolved upon encom-
passing his downfall though the thing was public property
all along though not to anything like the sensational ex-
tent that it subsequently blossomed into. Since their names
were coupled, though, since he was her declared favourite,
where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the rank