Page 741 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any
professional assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer,
thanked him very heartily, though preserving his proper
distance, and replied that he was come there about a lady,

now an inmate of Horne’s house, that was in an
interesting condition, poor body, from woman’s woe (and
here he fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had
yet taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the table, took on to
ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient
ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an
ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb
or was due, as with the noted physician, Mr Austin
Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For answer Mr
Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself
bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an
admirable droll mimic of Mother Grogan (the most
excellent creature of her sex though ‘tis pity she’s a
trollop): There’s a belly that never bore a bastard. This was
so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and
threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of
delight. The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of
mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber.
Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch
student, a little fume of a fellow, blond as tow,

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