Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/438

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(Drawls.) No, you aren't, not by a long shot if I know it. I don't see it, that’s all. No born gentleman, no one with the most rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak masquerading as a literateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling books, really gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom.

(Murmurs with hangdog meekness.) That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may…

(His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court.) You funny ass, you! You're too beastly awfully weird for words! I don’t think you need over excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. My literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan’t we! We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university.

(Indistinctly.) University of life. Bad art.

(Shouts.) It’s a damnably foul lie showing the moral rottenness of the man! (He extends his portfolio.) We have here damning evidenceevidence, [sic] the corpus delicti, my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the beast.