The swift December dusk had come tumbling clownishly after its dull day and, as he stared through the dull square of the
window of the schoolroom, he felt his belly crave for its food. He hoped there would be stew for dinner, turnips and
carrots and bruised potatoes and fat mutton pieces to be ladled out in thick peppered flour–fattened sauce. Stuff it into
you, his belly counselled him.
It would be a gloomy secret night. After early nightfall the yellow lamps would light up, here and there, the squalid
quarter of the brothels. He would follow a devious course up and down the streets, circling always nearer and nearer in a
tremor of fear and joy, until his feet led him suddenly round a dark corner. The whores would be just coming out of their
houses making ready for the night, yawning lazily after their sleep and settling the hairpins in their clusters of hair. He
would pass by them calmly waiting for a sudden movement of his own will or a sudden call to his sin–loving soul from
their soft perfumed flesh. Yet as he prowled in quest of that call, his senses, stultified only by his desire, would note
keenly all that wounded or shamed them; his eyes, a ring of porter froth on a clothless table or a photograph of two
soldiers standing to attention or a gaudy playbill; his ears, the drawling jargon of greeting:
—Hello, Bertie, any good in your mind?
—Is that you, pigeon?
—Number ten. Fresh Nelly is waiting on you.
—Good night, husband! Coming in to have a short time?
The equation on the page of his scribbler began to spread out a widening tail, eyed and starred like a peacock’s; and,
when the eyes and stars of its indices had been eliminated, began slowly to fold itself together again. The indices
appearing and disappearing were eyes opening and closing; the eyes opening and closing were stars being born and
being quenched. The vast cycle of starry life bore his weary mind outward to its verge and inward to its centre, a distant
music accompanying him outward and inward. What music? The music came nearer and he recalled the words, the
words of Shelley’s fragment upon the moon wandering companionless, pale for weariness. The stars began to crumble
and a cloud of fine stardust fell through space.
The dull light fell more faintly upon the page whereon another equation began to unfold itself slowly and to spread
abroad its widening tail. It was his own soul going forth to experience, unfolding itself sin by sin, spreading abroad the
bale–fire of its burning stars and folding back upon itself, fading slowly, quenching its own lights and fires. They were
quenched: and the cold darkness filled chaos.
A cold lucid indifference reigned in his soul. At his first violent sin he had felt a wave of vitality pass out of him and had
feared to find his body or his soul maimed by the excess. Instead the vital wave had carried him on its bosom out of
himself and back again when it receded: and no part of body or soul had been maimed but a dark peace had been
established between them. The chaos in which his ardour extinguished itself was a cold indifferent knowledge of himself.
He had sinned mortally not once but many times and he knew that, while he stood in danger of eternal damnation for the
first sin alone, by every succeeding sin he multiplied his guilt and his punishment. His days and works and thoughts
could make no atonement for him, the fountains of sanctifying grace having ceased to refresh his soul. At most, by an
alms given to a beggar whose blessing he fled from, he might hope wearily to win for himself some measure of actual
grace. Devotion had gone by the board. What did it avail to pray when he knew that his soul lusted after its own
destruction? A certain pride, a certain awe, withheld him from offering to God even one prayer at night, though he knew it
was in God’s power to take away his life while he slept and hurl his soul hellward ere he could beg for mercy. His pride in
his own sin, his loveless awe of God, told him that his offence was too grievous to be atoned for in whole or in part by a
false homage to the All–seeing and All–knowing.
—Well now, Ennis, I declare you have a head and so has my stick! Do you mean to say that you are not able to tell me
what a surd is?
The blundering answer stirred the embers of his contempt of his fellows. Towards others he felt neither shame nor fear.
On Sunday mornings as he passed the church door he glanced coldly at the worshippers who stood bareheaded, four
deep, outside the church, morally present at the mass which they could neither see nor hear. Their dull piety and the
sickly smell of the cheap hair–oil with which they had anointed their heads repelled him from the altar they prayed at. He
stooped to the evil of hypocrisy with others, sceptical of their innocence which he could cajole so easily.
On the wall of his bedroom hung an illuminated scroll, the certificate of his prefecture in the college of the sodality of
the Blessed Virgin Mary. On Saturday mornings when the sodality met in the chapel to recite the little office his place was
a cushioned kneeling–desk at the right of the altar from which he led his wing of boys through the responses. The
falsehood of his position did not pain him. If at moments he felt an impulse to rise from his post of honour and, confessing
before them all his unworthiness, to leave the chapel, a glance at their faces restrained him. The imagery of the psalms
of prophecy soothed his barren pride. The glories of Mary held his soul captive: spikenard and myrrh and frankincense,
symbolizing her royal lineage, her emblems, the late–flowering plant and late–blossoming tree, symbolizing the age–long
gradual growth of her cultus among men. When it fell to him to read the lesson towards the close of the office he read it
in a veiled voice, lulling his conscience to its music.
QUASI CEDRUS EXALTATA SUM IN LIBANON ET QUASI CUPRESSUS IN MONTE SION. QUASI PALMA
EXALTATA SUM IN GADES ET QUASI PLANTATIO ROSAE IN JERICHO. QUASI ULIVA SPECIOSA IN CAMPIS ET
QUASI PLATANUS EXALTATA SUM JUXTA AQUAM IN PLATEIS. SICUT CINNAMOMUM ET BALSAMUM
AROMATIZANS ODOREM DEDI ET QUASI MYRRHA ELECTA DEDI SUAVITATEM ODORIS.
His sin, which had covered him from the sight of God, had led him nearer to the refuge of sinners. Her eyes seemed to
regard him with mild pity; her holiness, a strange light glowing faintly upon her frail flesh, did not humiliate the sinner who
approached her. If ever he was impelled to cast sin from him and to repent the impulse that moved him was the wish to
be her knight. If ever his soul, re–entering her dwelling shyly after the frenzy of his body’s lust had spent itself, was
turned towards her whose emblem is the morning star, BRIGHT AND MUSICAL, TELLING OF HEAVEN AND INFUSING
PEACE, it was when her names were murmured softly by lips whereon there still lingered foul and shameful words, the
savour itself of a lewd kiss.
That was strange. He tried to think how it could be. But the dusk, deepening in the schoolroom, covered over his
thoughts. The bell rang. The master marked the sums and cuts to be done for the next lesson and went out. Heron,
beside Stephen, began to hum tunelessly.
MY EXCELLENT FRIEND BOMBADOS.
Ennis, who had gone to the yard, came back, saying:
—The boy from the house is coming up for the rector.
A tall boy behind Stephen rubbed his hands and said:
—That’s game ball. We can scut the whole hour. He won’t be in till after half two. Then you can ask him questions on
the catechism, Dedalus.
Stephen, leaning back and drawing idly on his scribbler, listened to the talk about him which Heron checked from time
to time by saying:
—Shut up, will you. Don’t make such a bally racket!
It was strange too that he found an arid pleasure in following up to the end the rigid lines of the doctrines of the church
and penetrating into obscure silences only to hear and feel the more deeply his own condemnation. The sentence of
saint James which says that he who offends against one commandment becomes guilty of all, had seemed to him first a
swollen phrase until he had begun to grope in the darkness of his own state. From the evil seed of lust all other deadly
sins had sprung forth: pride in himself and contempt of others, covetousness in using money for the purchase of unlawful
pleasures, envy of those whose vices he could not reach to and calumnious murmuring against the pious, gluttonous
enjoyment of food, the dull glowering anger amid which he brooded upon his longing, the swamp of spiritual and bodily
sloth in which his whole being had sunk.
As he sat in his bench gazing calmly at the rector’s shrewd harsh face, his mind wound itself in and out of the curious
questions proposed to it. If a man had stolen a pound in his youth and had used that pound to amass a huge fortune how
much was he obliged to give back, the pound he had stolen only or the pound together with the compound interest
accruing upon it or all his huge fortune? If a layman in giving baptism pour the water before saying the words is the child
baptized? Is baptism with a mineral water valid? How comes it that while the first beatitude promises the kingdom of
heaven to the poor of heart the second beatitude promises also to the meek that they shall possess the land? Why was
the sacrament of the eucharist instituted under the two species of bread and wine if Jesus Christ be present body and
blood, soul and divinity, in the bread alone and in the wine alone? Does a tiny particle of the consecrated bread contain
all the body and blood of Jesus Christ or a part only of the body and blood? If the wine change into vinegar and the host
crumble into corruption after they have been consecrated, is Jesus Christ still present under their species as God and as
man?
—Here he is! Here he is!
A boy from his post at the window had seen the rector come from the house. All the catechisms were opened and all
heads bent upon them silently. The rector entered and took his seat on the dais. A gentle kick from the tall boy in the
bench behind urged Stephen to ask a difficult question.
The rector did not ask for a catechism to hear the lesson from. He clasped his hands on the desk and said:
—The retreat will begin on Wednesday afternoon in honour of saint Francis Xavier whose feast day is Saturday. The
retreat will go on from Wednesday to Friday. On Friday confession will be heard all the afternoon after beads. If any boys
have special confessors perhaps it will be better for them not to change. Mass will be on Saturday morning at nine
o’clock and general communion for the whole college. Saturday will be a free day. But Saturday and Sunday being free
days some boys might be inclined to think that Monday is a free day also. Beware of making that mistake. I think you,
Lawless, are likely to make that mistake.
—I sir? Why, sir?
A little wave of quiet mirth broke forth over the class of boys from the rector’s grim smile. Stephen’s heart began slowly
to fold and fade with fear like a withering flower.
The rector went on gravely:
—You are all familiar with the story of the life of saint Francis Xavier, I suppose, the patron of your college. He came of
an old and illustrious Spanish family and you remember that he was one of the first followers of saint Ignatius. They met
in Paris where Francis Xavier was professor of philosophy at the university. This young and brilliant nobleman and man
of letters entered heart and soul into the ideas of our glorious founder and you know that he, at his own desire, was sent
by saint Ignatius to preach to the Indians. He is called, as you know, the apostle of the Indies. He went from country to
country in the east, from Africa to India, from India to Japan, baptizing the people. He is said to have baptized as many as
ten thousand idolaters in one month. It is said that his right arm had grown powerless from having been raised so often
over the heads of those whom he baptized. He wished then to go to China to win still more souls for God but he died of
fever on the island of Sancian. A great saint, saint Francis Xavier! A great soldier of God!
The rector paused and then, shaking his clasped hands before him, went on:
—He had the faith in him that moves mountains. Ten thousand souls won for God in a single month! That is a true
conqueror, true to the motto of our order: AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM! A saint who has great power in heaven,
remember: power to intercede for us in our grief; power to obtain whatever we pray for if it be for the good of our souls;
power above all to obtain for us the grace to repent if we be in sin. A great saint, saint Francis Xavier! A great fisher of
souls!
He ceased to shake his clasped hands and, resting them against his forehead, looked right and left of them keenly at
his listeners out of his dark stern eyes.
In the silence their dark fire kindled the dusk into a tawny glow. Stephen’s heart had withered up like a flower of the
desert that feels the simoom coming from afar.
—REMEMBER ONLY THY LAST THINGS AND THOU SHALT NOT SIN FOR EVER—words taken, my dear little
brothers in Christ, from the book of Ecclesiastes, seventh chapter, fortieth verse. In the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Stephen sat in the front bench of the chapel. Father Arnall sat at a table to the left of the altar. He wore about his
shoulders a heavy cloak; his pale face was drawn and his voice broken with rheum. The figure of his old master, so
strangely re–arisen, brought back to Stephen’s mind his life at Clongowes: the wide playgrounds, swarming with boys;
the square ditch; the little cemetery off the main avenue of limes where he had dreamed of being buried; the firelight on
the wall of the infirmary where he lay sick; the sorrowful face of Brother Michael. His soul, as these memories came back
to him, became again a child’s soul.
—We are assembled here today, my dear little brothers in Christ, for one brief moment far away from the busy bustle of
the outer world to celebrate and to honour one of the greatest of saints, the apostle of the Indies, the patron saint also of
your college, saint Francis Xavier. Year after year, for much longer than any of you, my dear little boys, can remember or
than I can remember, the boys of this college have met in this very chapel to make their annual retreat before the feast
day of their patron saint. Time has gone on and brought with it its changes. Even in the last few years what changes can
most of you not remember? Many of the boys who sat in those front benches a few years ago are perhaps now in distant
lands, in the burning tropics, or immersed in professional duties or in seminaries, or voyaging over the vast expanse of
the deep or, it may be, already called by the great God to another life and to the rendering up of their stewardship. And
still as the years roll by, bringing with them changes for good and bad, the memory of the great saint is honoured by the
boys of this college who make every year their annual retreat on the days preceding the feast day set apart by our Holy
Mother the Church to transmit to all the ages the name and fame of one of the greatest sons of catholic Spain.
—Now what is the meaning of this word RETREAT and why is it allowed on all hands to be a most salutary practice for
all who desire to lead before God and in the eyes of men a truly christian life? A retreat, my dear boys, signifies a
withdrawal for awhile from the cares of our life, the cares of this workaday world, in order to examine the state of our
conscience, to reflect on the mysteries of holy religion and to understand better why we are here in this world. During
these few days I intend to put before you some thoughts concerning the four last things. They are, as you know from
your catechism, death, judgement, hell, and heaven. We shall try to understand them fully during these few days so that
we may derive from the understanding of them a lasting benefit to our souls. And remember, my dear boys, that we have
been sent into this world for one thing and for one thing alone: to do God’s holy will and to save our immortal souls. All
else is worthless. One thing alone is needful, the salvation of one’s soul. What doth it profit a man to gain the whole
world if he suffer the loss of his immortal soul? Ah, my dear boys, believe me there is nothing in this wretched world that
can make up for such a loss.
—I will ask you, therefore, my dear boys, to put away from your minds during these few days all worldly thoughts,
whether of study or pleasure or ambition, and to give all your attention to the state of your souls. I need hardly remind
you that during the days of the retreat all boys are expected to preserve a quiet and pious demeanour and to shun all
loud unseemly pleasure. The elder boys, of course, will see that this custom is not infringed and I look especially to the
prefects and officers of the sodality of Our Blessed Lady and of the sodality of the holy angels to set a good example to
their fellow–students.
—Let us try, therefore, to make this retreat in honour of saint Francis with our whole heart and our whole mind. God’s
blessing will then be upon all your year’s studies. But, above and beyond all, let this retreat be one to which you can look
back in after years when maybe you are far from this college and among very different surroundings, to which you can
look back with joy and thankfulness and give thanks to God for having granted you this occasion of laying the first
foundation of a pious honourable zealous christian life. And if, as may so happen, there be at this moment in these
benches any poor soul who has had the unutterable misfortune to lose God’s holy grace and to fall into grievous sin, I
fervently trust and pray that this retreat may be the turning point in the life of that soul. I pray to God through the merits of
His zealous servant Francis Xavier, that such a soul may be led to sincere repentance and that the holy communion on
saint Francis’s day of this year may be a lasting covenant between God and that soul. For just and unjust, for saint and
sinner alike, may this retreat be a memorable one.
—Help me, my dear little brothers in Christ. Help me by your pious attention, by your own devotion, by your outward
demeanour. Banish from your minds all worldly thoughts and think only of the last things, death, judgement, hell, and
heaven. He who remembers these things, says Ecclesiastes, shall not sin for ever. He who remembers the last things will
act and think with them always before his eyes. He will live a good life and die a good death, believing and knowing that,
if he has sacrificed much in this earthly life, it will be given to him a hundredfold and a thousandfold more in the life to
come, in the kingdom without end—a blessing, my dear boys, which I wish you from my heart, one and all, in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen!
As he walked home with silent companions, a thick fog seemed to compass his mind. He waited in stupor of mind till it
should lift and reveal what it had hidden. He ate his dinner with surly appetite and when the meal was over and the
grease–strewn plates lay abandoned on the table, he rose and went to the window, clearing the thick scum from his
mouth with his tongue and licking it from his lips. So he had sunk to the state of a beast that licks his chaps after meat.
This was the end; and a faint glimmer of fear began to pierce the fog of his mind. He pressed his face against the pane
of the window and gazed out into the darkening street. Forms passed this way and that through the dull light. And that
was life. The letters of the name of Dublin lay heavily upon his mind, pushing one another surlily hither and thither with
slow boorish insistence. His soul was fattening and congealing into a gross grease, plunging ever deeper in its dull fear
into a sombre threatening dusk while the body that was his stood, listless and dishonoured, gazing out of darkened eyes,
helpless, perturbed, and human for a bovine god to stare upon.
The next day brought death and judgement, stirring his soul slowly from its listless despair. The faint glimmer of fear
became a terror of spirit as the hoarse voice of the preacher blew death into his soul. He suffered its agony. He felt the
death chill touch the extremities and creep onward towards the heart, the film of death veiling the eyes, the bright centres
of the brain extinguished one by one like lamps, the last sweat oozing upon the skin, the powerlessness of the dying
limbs, the speech thickening and wandering and failing, the heart throbbing faintly and more faintly, all but vanquished,
the breath, the poor breath, the poor helpless human spirit, sobbing and sighing, gurgling and rattling in the throat. No
help! No help! He—he himself—his body to which he had yielded was dying. Into the grave with it. Nail it down into a
wooden box, the corpse. Carry it out of the house on the shoulders of hirelings. Thrust it out of men’s sight into a long
hole in the ground, into the grave, to rot, to feed the mass of its creeping worms and to be devoured by scuttling plump–
bellied rats.
And while the friends were still standing in tears by the bedside the soul of the sinner was judged. At the last moment of
consciousness the whole earthly life passed before the vision of the soul and, ere it had time to reflect, the body had died
and the soul stood terrified before the judgement seat. God, who had long been merciful, would then be just. He had long
been patient, pleading with the sinful soul, giving it time to repent, sparing it yet awhile. But that time had gone. Time was
to sin and to enjoy, time was to scoff at God and at the warnings of His holy church, time was to defy His majesty, to
disobey His commands, to hoodwink one’s fellow men, to commit sin after sin and to hide one’s corruption from the sight
of men. But that time was over. Now it was God’s turn: and He was not to be hoodwinked or deceived. Every sin would
then come forth from its lurking place, the most rebellious against the divine will and the most degrading to our poor
corrupt nature, the tiniest imperfection and the most heinous atrocity. What did it avail then to have been a great
emperor, a great general, a marvellous inventor, the most learned of the learned? All were as one before the judgement
seat of God. He would reward the good and punish the wicked. One single instant was enough for the trial of a man’s
soul. One single instant after the body’s death, the soul had been weighed in the balance. The particular judgement was
over and the soul had passed to the abode of bliss or to the prison of purgatory or had been hurled howling into hell.
Nor was that all. God’s justice had still to be vindicated before men: after the particular there still remained the general
judgement. The last day had come. The doomsday was at hand. The stars of heaven were falling upon the earth like the
figs cast by the fig–tree which the wind has shaken. The sun, the great luminary of the universe, had become as
sackcloth of hair. The moon was blood–red. The firmament was as a scroll rolled away. The archangel Michael, the
prince of the heavenly host, appeared glorious and terrible against the sky. With one foot on the sea and one foot on the
land he blew from the arch–angelical trumpet the brazen death of time. The three blasts of the angel filled all the
universe. Time is, time was, but time shall be no more. At the last blast the souls of universal humanity throng towards
the valley of Jehoshaphat, rich and poor, gentle and simple, wise and foolish, good and wicked. The soul of every human
being that has ever existed, the souls of all those who shall yet be born, all the sons and daughters of Adam, all are
assembled on that supreme day. And lo, the supreme judge is coming! No longer the lowly Lamb of God, no longer the
meek Jesus of Nazareth, no longer the Man of Sorrows, no longer the Good Shepherd, He is seen now coming upon the
clouds, in great power and majesty, attended by nine choirs of angels, angels and archangels, principalities, powers and
virtues, thrones and dominations, cherubim and seraphim, God Omnipotent, God Everlasting. He speaks: and His voice
is heard even at the farthest limits of space, even In the bottomless abyss. Supreme Judge, from His sentence there will
be and can be no appeal. He calls the just to His side, bidding them enter into the kingdom, the eternity of bliss prepared
for them. The unjust He casts from Him, crying in His offended majesty: DEPART FROM ME, YE CURSED, INTO
EVERLASTING FIRE WHICH WAS PREPARED FOR THE DEVIL AND HIS ANGELS. O, what agony then for the
miserable sinners! Friend is torn apart from friend, children are torn from their parents, husbands from their wives. The
poor sinner holds out his arms to those who were dear to him in this earthly world, to those whose simple piety perhaps
he made a mock of, to those who counselled him and tried to lead him on the right path, to a kind brother, to a loving
sister, to the mother and father who loved him so dearly. But it is too late: the just turn away from the wretched damned
souls which now appear before the eyes of all in their hideous and evil character. O you hypocrites, O, you whited
sepulchres, O you who present a smooth smiling face to the world while your soul within is a foul swamp of sin, how will
it fare with you in that terrible day?
And this day will come, shall come, must come: the day of death and the day of judgement. It is appointed unto man to
die and after death the judgement. Death is certain. The time and manner are uncertain, whether from long disease or
from some unexpected accident: the Son of God