—I may not have his talent, said Stephen quietly. —You never know, said the dean brightly. We never can say what is in us. I most certainly should not be despondent. _Per aspera ad astra._ He left the hearth quickly and went towards the landing to oversee the arrival of the first arts’ class. Leaning against the fireplace Stephen heard him greet briskly and impartially every student of the class and could almost see the frank smiles of the coarser students. A desolating pity began to fall like dew upon his easily embittered heart for this faithful servingman of the knightly Loyola, for this halfbrother of the clergy, more venal than they in speech, more steadfast of soul than they, one whom he would never call his ghostly father; and he thought how this man and his companions had earned the name of worldlings at the hands not of the unworldly only but of the worldly also for having pleaded, during all their history, at the bar of God’s justice for the souls of the lax and the lukewarm and the prudent. The entry of the professor was signalled by a few rounds of Kentish fire from the heavy boots of those students who sat on the highest tier of the gloomy theatre under the grey cobwebbed windows. The calling of the roll began and the responses to the names were given out in all tones until the name of Peter Byrne was reached. —Here! A deep bass note in response came from the upper tier, followed by coughs of protest along the other benches. The professor paused in his reading and called the next name: —Cranly! No answer. —Mr Cranly! A smile flew across Stephen’s face as he thought of his friend’s studies. —Try Leopardstown! said a voice from the bench behind. Stephen glanced up quickly but Moynihan’s snoutish face, outlined on the grey light, was impassive. A formula was given out. Amid the rustling of the notebooks Stephen turned back again and said: —Give me some paper for God’s sake. —Are you as bad as that? asked Moynihan with a broad grin. He tore a sheet from his scribbler and passed it down, whispering: —In case of necessity any layman or woman can do it. The formula which he wrote obediently on the sheet of paper, the coiling and uncoiling calculations of the professor, the spectrelike symbols of force and velocity fascinated and jaded Stephen’s mind. He had heard some say that the old professor was an atheist freemason. O the grey dull day! It seemed a limbo of painless patient consciousness through which souls of mathematicians might wander, projecting long slender fabrics from plane to plane of ever rarer and paler twilight, radiating swift eddies to the last verges of a universe ever vaster, farther and more impalpable. —So we must distinguish between elliptical and ellipsoidal. Perhaps some of you gentlemen may be familiar with the works of Mr W. S. Gilbert. In one of his songs he speaks of the billiard sharp who is condemned to play: On a cloth untrue With a twisted cue And elliptical billiard balls.