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ceiling.
—That’s it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in
the fire. We haven’t got the chance of a snowball in hell.
THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME—Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two
quiet claws. We mustn’t be led away by words, by sounds of
words. We think of Rome, imperial, imperious, imperative.
He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained
shirtcuffs, pausing:
—What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile.
Cloacae: sewers. The Jews in the wilderness and on the
mountaintop said: It is meet to be here. Let us build an altar
to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who follows in
his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set
his foot (on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal obses-
sion. He gazed about him in his toga and he said: It is meet
to be here. Let us construct a watercloset.
—Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old
ancient ancestors, as we read in the first chapter of Guin-
ness’s, were partial to the running stream.
—They were nature’s gentlemen, J. J. O’Molloy mur-
mured. But we have also Roman law.
—And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh
responded.
—Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J.
O’Molloy asked. It was at the royal university dinner. Ev-
erything was going swimmingly ...