Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/486

Rh Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. (His throat twitches.) Slapbang! There he goes again.

The stye I dislike.

(Arches his eyebrows.) Contact with a goldring, they say. Argumentum ad feminam, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosaurus. For the rest Eve’s sovereign remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. (He twitches.) It is a funny sound. (He coughs encouragingly.) But possibly it is only a wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will have taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.

(Reflecting.) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said…

(Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking.) Stop twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten. Exercise your mnemotechnic. La causa è santa. Tara. Tara. (Aside.) He will surely remember.

Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a deadhand cures. Mnemo?

(Excitedly.) I say so. I say so. E’en so. Technic. (He taps his parchment roll energetically.) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic.