Page 1048 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

and crime on principle. Yet, though such criminal
propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom in any
shape or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it
(while inwardly remaining what he was) a certain kind of

admiration for a man who had actually brandished a knife,
cold steel, with the courage of his political convictions
(though, personally, he would never be a party to any such
thing), off the same bat as those love vendettas of the
south, have her or swing for her, when the husband
frequently, after some words passed between the two
concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (he
having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his
adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial liaison
by plunging his knife into her, until it just struck him that
Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for
the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he
was reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which,
in point of fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his
skin on. In any case that was very ancient history by now
and as for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had
transparently outlived his welcome. He ought to have
either died naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses,
always farewell positively last performance then come up
smiling again. Generous to a fault of course,

1047 of 1305