Donovan again laid his hand on his chest and said:
--Our end is the acquisition of knowledge. Then he said quickly:
--I hear you are writing some essays about esthetics.
Stephen made a vague gesture of denial.
--Goethe and Lessing, said Donovan, have written a lot on that
subject, the classical school and the romantic school and all that. The
Laocoon interested me very much when I read it. Of course it is
idealistic, German, ultra-profound.
Neither of the others spoke. Donovan took leave of them urbanely.
--I must go, he said softly and benevolently, I have a strong
suspicion, amounting almost to a conviction, that my sister intended to
make pancakes today for the dinner of the Donovan family.
--Goodbye, Stephen said in his wake. Don't forget the turnips for me
and my mate.
Lynch gazed after him, his lip curling in slow scorn till his face
resembled a devil's mask:
--To think that that yellow pancake-eating excrement can get a good
job, he said at length, and I have to smoke cheap cigarettes!
They turned their faces towards Merrion Square and went for a little in
silence.
--To finish what I was saying about beauty, said Stephen, the most
satisfying relations of the sensible must therefore correspond to the
necessary phases of artistic apprehension.
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