No More Learning

What lay behind it
or within it? A dull torpor of the soul or the dullness of the
thundercloud, charged with intellection and capable of the gloom of
God?

--I meant a different kind of lamp, sir, said Stephen.

--Undoubtedly, said the dean.

--One difficulty, said Stephen, in esthetic discussion is to know
whether words are being used according to the literary tradition or
according to the tradition of the marketplace. I remember a sentence of
Newman's in which he says of the Blessed Virgin that she was detained
in the full company of the saints. The use of the word in the
marketplace is quite different. I HOPE I AM NOT DETAINING YOU.

--Not in the least, said the dean politely.

--No, no, said Stephen, smiling, I mean--

--Yes, yes; I see, said the dean quickly, I quite catch the point:
DETAIN.

He thrust forward his under jaw and uttered a dry short cough.

--To return to the lamp, he said, the feeding of it is also a nice
problem. You must choose the pure oil and you must be careful when you
pour it in not to overflow it, not to pour in more than the funnel can
hold.

--What funnel? asked Stephen.

--The funnel through which you pour the oil into your lamp.

--That? said Stephen. Is that called a funnel? Is it not a tundish?

--What is a tundish?

--That. The. . . funnel.

--Is that called a tundish in Ireland? asked the dean. I never heard
the word in my life.

--It is called a tundish in Lower Drumcondra, said Stephen, laughing,
where they speak the best English.

--A tundish, said the dean reflectively. That is a most interesting
word. I must look that word up. Upon my word I must.

His courtesy of manner rang a little false and Stephen looked at the
English convert with the same eyes as the elder brother in the parable
may have turned on the prodigal. A humble follower in the wake of
clamorous conversions, a poor Englishman in Ireland, he seemed to have
entered on the stage of jesuit history when that strange play of
intrigue and suffering and envy and struggle and indignity had been all
but given through--a late-comer, a tardy spirit. From what had he set
out? Perhaps he had been born and bred among serious dissenters, seeing
salvation in Jesus only and abhorring the vain pomps of the
establishment. Had he felt the need of an implicit faith amid the
welter of sectarianism and the jargon of its turbulent schisms, six
principle men, peculiar people, seed and snake baptists, supralapsarian
dogmatists? Had he found the true church all of a sudden in winding up
to the end like a reel of cotton some fine-spun line of reasoning upon
insufflation on the imposition of hands or the procession of the Holy
Ghost? Or had Lord Christ touched him and bidden him follow, like that
disciple who had sat at the receipt of custom, as he sat by the door of
some zinc-roofed chapel, yawning and telling over his church pence?

The dean repeated the word yet again.

--Tundish! Well now, that is interesting!

--The question you asked me a moment ago seems to me more interesting.
What is that beauty which the artist struggles to express from lumps of
earth, said Stephen coldly.

The little word seemed to have turned a rapier point of his
sensitiveness against this courteous and vigilant foe. He felt with a
smart of dejection that the man to whom he was speaking was a
countryman of Ben Jonson. He thought:

--The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How
different are the words HOME, CHRIST, ALE, MASTER, on his lips and on
mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His
language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired
speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at
bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.

--And to distinguish between the beautiful and the sublime, the dean
added, to distinguish between moral beauty and material beauty. And to
inquire what kind of beauty is proper to each of the various arts.
These are some interesting points we might take up.

Stephen, disheartened suddenly by the dean's firm, dry tone, was
silent; and through the silence a distant noise of many boots and
confused voices came up the staircase.

--In pursuing these speculations, said the dean conclusively, there
is, however, the danger of perishing of inanition. First you must take
your degree. Set that before you as your first aim. Then, little by
little, you will see your way. I mean in every sense, your way in life
and in thinking. It may be uphill pedalling at first. Take Mr Moonan.
He was a long time before he got to the top. But he got there.

--I may not have his talent, said Stephen quietly.

--You never know, said the dean brightly. We never can say what is in
us. I most certainly should not be despondent. PER ASPERA AD ASTRA.

He left the hearth quickly and went towards the landing to oversee the
arrival of the first arts' class.

Leaning against the fireplace Stephen heard him greet briskly and
impartially every student of the class and could almost see the frank
smiles of the coarser students. A desolating pity began to fall like
dew upon his easily embittered heart for this faithful serving-man of
the knightly Loyola, for this half-brother of the clergy, more venal
than they in speech, more steadfast of soul than they, one whom he
would never call his ghostly father; and he thought how this man and
his companions had earned the name of worldlings at the hands not of
the unworldly only but of the worldly also for having pleaded, during
all their history, at the bar of God's justice for the souls of the lax
and the lukewarm and the prudent.

The entry of the professor was signalled by a few rounds of Kentish
fire from the heavy boots of those students who sat on the highest tier
of the gloomy theatre under the grey cobwebbed windows. The calling of
the roll began and the responses to the names were given out in all
tones until the name of Peter Byrne was reached.

--Here!

A deep bass note in response came from the upper tier, followed by
coughs of protest along the other benches.

The professor paused in his reading and called the next name:

--Cranly!

No answer.

--Mr Cranly!

A smile flew across Stephen's face as he thought of his friend's
studies.

--Try Leopardstown! said a voice from the bench behind.

Stephen glanced up quickly but Moynihan's snoutish face, outlined on the
grey light, was impassive. A formula was given out. Amid the rustling of
the notebooks Stephen turned back again and said:

--Give me some paper for God's sake.

--Are you as bad as that? asked Moynihan with a broad grin.

He tore a sheet from his scribbler and passed it down, whispering:

--In case of necessity any layman or woman can do it.

The formula which he wrote obediently on the sheet of paper, the
coiling and uncoiling calculations of the professor, the spectre-like
symbols of force and velocity fascinated and jaded Stephen's mind. He
had heard some say that the old professor was an atheist freemason. O
the grey dull day! It seemed a limbo of painless patient consciousness
through which souls of mathematicians might wander, projecting long
slender fabrics from plane to plane of ever rarer and paler twilight,
radiating swift eddies to the last verges of a universe ever vaster,
farther and more impalpable.

--So we must distinguish between elliptical and ellipsoidal. Perhaps some
of you gentlemen may be familiar with the works of Mr W. S. Gilbert. In
one of his songs he speaks of the billiard sharp who is condemned to
play:


On a cloth untrue
With a twisted cue
And elliptical billiard balls.

--He means a ball having the form of the ellipsoid of the principal
axes of which I spoke a moment ago.

Moynihan leaned down towards Stephen's ear and murmured:

--What price ellipsoidal balls! chase me, ladies, I'm in the cavalry!

His fellow student's rude humour ran like a gust through the cloister
of Stephen's mind, shaking into gay life limp priestly vestments that
hung upon the walls, setting them to sway and caper in a sabbath of
misrule. The forms of the community emerged from the gust-blown
vestments, the dean of studies, the portly florid bursar with his cap
of grey hair, the president, the little priest with feathery hair who
wrote devout verses, the squat peasant form of the professor of
economics, the tall form of the young professor of mental science
discussing on the landing a case of conscience with his class like a
giraffe cropping high leafage among a herd of antelopes, the grave
troubled prefect of the sodality, the plump round-headed professor of
Italian with his rogue's eyes. They came ambling and stumbling,
tumbling and capering, kilting their gowns for leap frog, holding one
another back, shaken with deep false laughter, smacking one another
behind and laughing at their rude malice, calling to one another by
familiar nicknames, protesting with sudden dignity at some rough usage,
whispering two and two behind their hands.

The professor had gone to the glass cases on the side wall, from a
shelf of which he took down a set of coils, blew away the dust from
many points and, bearing it carefully to the table, held a finger on it
while he proceeded with his lecture. He explained that the wires in
modern coils were of a compound called platinoid lately discovered by
F. W. Martino.

He spoke clearly the initials and surname of the discoverer. Moynihan
whispered from behind:

--Good old Fresh Water Martin!

--Ask him, Stephen whispered back with weary humour, if he wants a
subject for electrocution. He can have me.

Moynihan, seeing the professor bend over the coils, rose in his bench
and, clacking noiselessly the fingers of his right hand, began to call
with the voice of a slobbering urchin:

--Please teacher! This boy is after saying a bad word, teacher.

--Platinoid, the professor said solemnly, is preferred to German
silver because it has a lower coefficient of resistance by changes of
temperature. The platinoid wire is insulated and the covering of silk
that insulates it is wound on the ebonite bobbins just where my finger
is. If it were wound single an extra current would be induced in the
coils. The bobbins are saturated in hot paraffin wax. . .

A sharp Ulster voice said from the bench below Stephen:

--Are we likely to be asked questions on applied science?

The professor began to juggle gravely with the terms pure science and
applied science. A heavy-built student, wearing gold spectacles, stared
with some wonder at the questioner. Moynihan murmured from behind in
his natural voice:

--Isn't MacAlister a devil for his pound of flesh?

Stephen looked coldly on the oblong skull beneath him overgrown with
tangled twine-coloured hair. The voice, the accent, the mind of the
questioner offended him and he allowed the offence to carry him towards
wilful unkindness, bidding his mind think that the student's father
would have done better had he sent his son to Belfast to study and have
saved something on the train fare by so doing.

The oblong skull beneath did not turn to meet this shaft of thought and
yet the shaft came back to its bowstring; for he saw in a moment the
student's whey-pale face.

--That thought is not mine, he said to himself quickly. It came from
the comic Irishman in the bench behind. Patience. Can you say with
certitude by whom the soul of your race was bartered and its elect
betrayed--by the questioner or by the mocker? Patience. Remember
Epictetus. It is probably in his character to ask such a question at
such a moment in such a tone and to pronounce the word SCIENCE as a
monosyllable.

The droning voice of the professor continued to wind itself slowly
round and round the coils it spoke of, doubling, trebling, quadrupling
its somnolent energy as the coil multiplied its ohms of resistance.

Moynihan's voice called from behind in echo to a distant bell:

--Closing time, gents!

The entrance hall was crowded and loud with talk. On a table near the
door were two photographs in frames and between them a long roll of
paper bearing an irregular tail of signatures. MacCann went briskly to
and fro among the students, talking rapidly, answering rebuffs and
leading one after another to the table. In the inner hall the dean of
studies stood talking to a young professor, stroking his chin gravely
and nodding his head.

Stephen, checked by the crowd at the door, halted irresolutely. From
under the wide falling leaf of a soft hat Cranly's dark eyes were
watching him.

--Have you signed? Stephen asked.

Cranly closed his long thin-lipped mouth, communed with himself an
instant and answered:

--EGO HABEO.

--What is it for?

--QUOD?

--What is it for?

Cranly turned his pale face to Stephen and said blandly and bitterly:

--PER PAX UNIVERSALIS.

Stephen pointed to the Tsar's photograph and said:

--He has the face of a besotted Christ.

The scorn and anger in his voice brought Cranly's eyes back from a calm
survey of the walls of the hall.

--Are you annoyed? he asked.

--No, answered Stephen.

--Are you in bad humour?

--No.

--CREDO UT VOS SANGUINARIUS MENDAX ESTIS, said Cranly, QUIA FACIES
VOSTRA MONSTRAT UT VOS IN DAMNO MALO HUMORE ESTIS.

Moynihan, on his way to the table, said in Stephen's ear:

--MacCann is in tiptop form. Ready to shed the last drop. Brand new
world. No stimulants and votes for the bitches.

Stephen smiled at the manner of this confidence and, when Moynihan had
passed, turned again to meet Cranly's eyes.

--Perhaps you can tell me, he said, why he pours his soul so freely
into my ear. Can you?

A dull scowl appeared on Cranly's forehead. He stared at the table
where Moynihan had bent to write his name on the roll, and then said
flatly:

--A sugar!

--QUIS EST IN MALO HUMORE, said Stephen, EGO AUT VOS?

Cranly did not take up the taunt. He brooded sourly on his judgement
and repeated with the same flat force:

--A flaming bloody sugar, that's what he is!

It was his epitaph for all dead friendships and Stephen wondered
whether it would ever be spoken in the same tone over his memory. The
heavy lumpish phrase sank slowly out of hearing like a stone through a
quagmire. Stephen saw it sink as he had seen many another, feeling its
heaviness depress his heart. Cranly's speech, unlike that of Davin, had
neither rare phrases of Elizabethan English nor quaintly turned
versions of Irish idioms. Its drawl was an echo of the quays of Dublin
given back by a bleak decaying seaport, its energy an echo of the
sacred eloquence of Dublin given back flatly by a Wicklow pulpit.

The heavy scowl faded from Cranly's face as MacCann marched briskly
towards them from the other side of the hall.

--Here you are! said MacCann cheerily.

--Here I am! said Stephen.

--Late as usual. Can you not combine the progressive tendency with a
respect for punctuality?

--That question is out of order, said Stephen. Next business.

His smiling eyes were fixed on a silver-wrapped tablet of milk chocolate
which peeped out of the propagandist's breast-pocket. A little ring of
listeners closed round to hear the war of wits. A lean student with
olive skin and lank black hair thrust his face between the two, glancing
from one to the other at each phrase and seeming to try to catch each
flying phrase in his open moist mouth. Cranly took a small grey handball
from his pocket and began to examine it closely, turning it over and over.

--Next business? said MacCann. Hom!

He gave a loud cough of laughter, smiled broadly and tugged twice at
the straw-coloured goatee which hung from his blunt chin.

--The next business is to sign the testimonial.

--Will you pay me anything if I sign? asked Stephen.

--I thought you were an idealist, said MacCann.

The gipsy-like student looked about him and addressed the onlookers in
an indistinct bleating voice.

--By hell, that's a queer notion.
I consider that notion to be a
mercenary notion.

His voice faded into silence. No heed was paid to his words. He turned
his olive face, equine in expression, towards Stephen, inviting him to
speak again.

MacCann began to speak with fluent energy of the Tsar's rescript, of
Stead, of general disarmament arbitration in cases of international
disputes, of the signs of the times, of the new humanity and the new
gospel of life which would make it the business of the community to
secure as cheaply as possible the greatest possible happiness of the
greatest possible number.

The gipsy student responded to the close of the period by crying:

--Three cheers for universal brotherhood!

--Go on, Temple, said a stout ruddy student near him. I'll stand you a
pint after.

--I'm a believer in universal brotherhood, said Temple, glancing about
him out of his dark oval eyes. Marx is only a bloody cod.

Cranly gripped his arm tightly to check his tongue, smiling uneasily,
and repeated:

--Easy, easy, easy!

Temple struggled to free his arm but continued, his mouth flecked by a
thin foam:

--Socialism was founded by an Irishman and the first man in Europe who
preached the freedom of thought was Collins. Two hundred years ago. He
denounced priestcraft, the philosopher of Middlesex. Three cheers for
John Anthony Collins!

A thin voice from the verge of the ring replied:

--Pip! pip!

Moynihan murmured beside Stephen's ear:

--And what about John Anthony's poor little sister:

Lottie Collins lost her drawers;
Won't you kindly lend her yours?

Stephen laughed and Moynihan, pleased with the result, murmured again:

--We'll have five bob each way on John Anthony Collins.

--I am waiting for your answer, said MacCann briefly.

--The affair doesn't interest me in the least, said Stephen wearily.
You know that well. Why do you make a scene about it?

--Good! said MacCann, smacking his lips. You are a reactionary, then?

--Do you think you impress me, Stephen asked, when you flourish your
wooden sword?

--Metaphors! said MacCann bluntly. Come to facts.

Stephen blushed and turned aside. MacCann stood his ground and said with
hostile humour:

--Minor poets, I suppose, are above such trivial questions as the
question of universal peace.

Cranly raised his head and held the handball between the two students
by way of a peace-offering, saying:

--PAX SUPER TOTUM SANGUINARIUM GLOBUM.

Stephen, moving away the bystanders, jerked his shoulder angrily in the
direction of the Tsar's image, saying:

--Keep your icon. If we must have a Jesus let us have a legitimate
Jesus.

--By hell, that's a good one! said the gipsy student to those about
him, that's a fine expression. I like that expression immensely.

He gulped down the spittle in his throat as if he were gulping down the
phrase and, fumbling at the peak of his tweed cap, turned to Stephen,
saying:

--Excuse me, sir, what do you mean by that expression you uttered just
now?

Feeling himself jostled by the students near him, he said to them:

--I am curious to know now what he meant by that expression.

He turned again to Stephen and said in a whisper:

--Do you believe in Jesus? I believe in man. Of course, I don't know
if you believe in man. I admire you, sir. I admire the mind of man
independent of all religions. Is that your opinion about the mind of
Jesus?

--Go on, Temple, said the stout ruddy student, returning, as was his
wont, to his first idea, that pint is waiting for you.

--He thinks I'm an imbecile, Temple explained to Stephen, because I'm a
believer in the power of mind.

Cranly linked his arms into those of Stephen and his admirer and said:

--NOS AD MANUM BALLUM JOCABIMUS.

Stephen, in the act of being led away, caught sight of MacCann's
flushed blunt-featured face.

--My signature is of no account, he said politely. You are right to go
your way. Leave me to go mine.

--Dedalus, said MacCann crisply, I believe you're a good fellow but
you have yet to learn the dignity of altruism and the responsibility of
the human individual.

A voice said:

--Intellectual crankery is better out of this movement than in it.

Stephen, recognizing the harsh tone of MacAlister's voice did not turn
in the direction of the voice. Cranly pushed solemnly through the
throng of students, linking Stephen and Temple like a celebrant
attended by his ministers on his way to the altar.

Temple bent eagerly across Cranly's breast and said:

--Did you hear MacAlister what he said? That youth is jealous of you.
Did you see that? I bet Cranly didn't see that. By hell, I saw that at
once.

As they crossed the inner hall, the dean of studies was in the act of
escaping from the student with whom he had been conversing. He stood at
the foot of the staircase, a foot on the lowest step, his threadbare
soutane gathered about him for the ascent with womanish care, nodding
his head often and repeating:

--Not a doubt of it, Mr Hackett! Very fine! Not a doubt of it!

In the middle of the hall the prefect of the college sodality was
speaking earnestly, in a soft querulous voice, with a boarder. As he
spoke he wrinkled a little his freckled brow and bit, between his
phrases, at a tiny bone pencil.

--I hope the matric men will all come. The first arts' men are pretty
sure. Second arts, too. We must make sure of the newcomers.

Temple bent again across Cranly, as they were passing through the
doorway, and said in a swift whisper:

--Do you know that he is a married man? he was a married man before
they converted him. He has a wife and children somewhere. By hell, I
think that's the queerest notion I ever heard! Eh?

His whisper trailed off into sly cackling laughter. The moment they
were through the doorway Cranly seized him rudely by the neck and shook
him, saying:

--You flaming floundering fool! I'll take my dying bible there isn't a
bigger bloody ape, do you know, than you in the whole flaming bloody
world!

Temple wriggled in his grip, laughing still with sly content, while
Cranly repeated flatly at every rude shake:

--A flaming flaring bloody idiot!

They crossed the weedy garden together. The president, wrapped in a
heavy loose cloak, was coming towards them along one of the walks,
reading his office. At the end of the walk he halted before turning and
raised his eyes. The students saluted, Temple fumbling as before at the
peak of his cap. They walked forward in silence. As they neared the
alley Stephen could hear the thuds of the players' hands and the wet
smacks of the ball and Davin's voice crying out excitedly at each
stroke.

The three students halted round the box on which Davin sat to follow
the game. Temple, after a few moments, sidled across to Stephen and
said:

--Excuse me, I wanted to ask you, do you believe that Jean-Jacques
Rousseau was a sincere man?

Stephen laughed outright. Cranly, picking up the broken stave of a cask
from the grass at his feet, turned swiftly and said sternly:

--Temple, I declare to the living God if you say another word, do you
know, to anybody on any subject, I'll kill you SUPER SPOTTUM.

--He was like you, I fancy, said Stephen, an emotional man.

--Blast him, curse him! said Cranly broadly. Don't talk to him at all.
Sure, you might as well be talking, do you know, to a flaming
chamber-pot as talking to Temple. Go home, Temple. For God's sake, go
home.

--I don't care a damn about you, Cranly, answered Temple, moving out of
reach of the uplifted stave and pointing at Stephen. He's the only man
I see in this institution that has an individual mind.

--Institution! Individual! cried Cranly. Go home, blast you, for
you're a hopeless bloody man.

--I'm an emotional man, said Temple. That's quite rightly expressed.
And I'm proud that I'm an emotionalist.

He sidled out of the alley, smiling slyly. Cranly watched him with a
blank expressionless face.

--Look at him! he said. Did you ever see such a go-by-the-wall?

His phrase was greeted by a strange laugh from a student who lounged
against the wall, his peaked cap down on his eyes. The laugh, pitched
in a high key and coming from a so muscular frame, seemed like the
whinny of an elephant. The student's body shook all over and, to ease
his mirth, he rubbed both his hands delightedly over his groins.

--Lynch is awake, said Cranly.

Lynch, for answer, straightened himself and thrust forward his chest.

--Lynch puts out his chest, said Stephen, as a criticism of life.

Lynch smote himself sonorously on the chest and said:

--Who has anything to say about my girth?

Cranly took him at the word and the two began to tussle. When their
faces had flushed with the struggle they drew apart, panting. Stephen
bent down towards Davin who, intent on the game, had paid no heed to
the talk of the others.

--And how is my little tame goose? he asked. Did he sign, too?

Davin nodded and said:

--And you, Stevie?

Stephen shook his head.

--You're a terrible man, Stevie, said Davin, taking the short pipe
from his mouth, always alone.

--Now that you have signed the petition for universal peace, said
Stephen, I suppose you will burn that little copybook I saw in your
room.

As Davin did not answer, Stephen began to quote:

--Long pace, fianna! Right incline, fianna! Fianna, by numbers,
salute, one, two!

--That's a different question, said Davin. I'm an Irish nationalist,
first and foremost. But that's you all out. You're a born sneerer,
Stevie.

--When you make the next rebellion with hurleysticks, said Stephen,
and want the indispensable informer, tell me. I can find you a few in
this college.

--I can't understand you, said Davin. One time I hear you talk against
English literature. Now you talk against the Irish informers. What with
your name and your ideas--Are you Irish at all?

--Come with me now to the office of arms and I will show you the tree
of my family, said Stephen.

--Then be one of us, said Davin. Why don't you learn Irish? Why did you
drop out of the league class after the first lesson?

--You know one reason why, answered Stephen.

Davin tossed his head and laughed.

--Oh, come now, he said. Is it on account of that certain young lady
and Father Moran? But that's all in your own mind, Stevie. They were
only talking and laughing.

Stephen paused and laid a friendly hand upon Davin's shoulder.

--Do you remember, he said, when we knew each other first? The first
morning we met you asked me to show you the way to the matriculation
class, putting a very strong stress on the first syllable. You
remember? Then you used to address the jesuits as father, you remember?
I ask myself about you: IS HE AS INNOCENT AS HIS SPEECH?

--I'm a simple person, said Davin. You know that. When you told me
that night in Harcourt Street those things about your private life,
honest to God, Stevie, I was not able to eat my dinner. I was quite
bad. I was awake a long time that night. Why did you tell me those
things?

--Thanks, said Stephen. You mean I am a monster.

--No, said Davin. But I wish you had not told me.

A tide began to surge beneath the calm surface of Stephen's
friendliness.

--This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I
shall express myself as I am.

--Try to be one of us, repeated Davin. In heart you are an Irish man
but your pride is too powerful.

--My ancestors threw off their language and took another, Stephen said.
They allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. Do you fancy I am
going to pay in my own life and person debts they made? What for?

--For our freedom, said Davin.

--No honourable and sincere man, said Stephen, has given up to you his
life and his youth and his affections from the days of Tone to those of
Parnell, but you sold him to the enemy or failed him in need or reviled
him and left him for another. And you invite me to be one of you. I'd
see you damned first.

--They died for their ideals, Stevie, said Davin. Our day will come
yet, believe me.

Stephen, following his own thought, was silent for an instant.

--The soul is born, he said vaguely, first in those moments I told you
of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the
body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets
flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality,
language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

Davin knocked the ashes from his pipe.

--Too deep for me, Stevie, he said. But a man's country comes first.
Ireland first, Stevie. You can be a poet or a mystic after.

--Do you know what Ireland is? asked Stephen with cold violence.
Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.

Davin rose from his box and went towards the players, shaking his head
sadly. But in a moment his sadness left him and he was hotly disputing
with Cranly and the two players who had finished their game. A match of
four was arranged, Cranly insisting, however, that his ball should be
used. He let it rebound twice or thrice to his hand and struck it strongly
and swiftly towards the base of the alley, exclaiming in answer to its
thud:

--Your soul!