"Drouth is stronger than faction."

(335.15-337.14)  This was a bit of a tougher passage for me today, possibly because it seems like it's one of the chapter's transition points.  We begin to march toward the story of the Russian General with an exhortation:  "Let us propel us for the frey of the fray!  Us, us, beraddy!"  McHugh notes that the language that follows (e.g., "Ko Niutirenis hauru leish!") approximates part of the war cry from a Maori haka, and the more English-centric language also indicates that HCE is getting ready for battle/storytelling.  As the patrons urge HCE on, the language once again recalls HCE's incident in Phoenix Park, "where obelisk rises when odalisks fall."  Growing more and more impatient, the patrons "pled him beheighten the firing."  

A preface tells us that HCE's story is a continuation of what came before, but it also starts from a new beginning:  "We are once amore as babes awondering in a wold made fresh where with the hen in the storyaboot we start from scratch."  Beginning, HCE promises us "the truce, the old truce and nattonbuff the truce, boys."  The patrons raise a toast and take a drink of their beers ("Drouth is stronger than faction," after all), and HCE begins the story.

Interestingly enough, the Russian General initially comes in the form of "The Grant," an American general (and eventual president . . . one of the more interesting figures from U.S. history).  Like HCE, the general had a bit of a lecherous side, for he liked "to feel to every of the youging fruits, tenderosed like an atalantic's breastswells."  There appears to be some grumbling from one or more of the patrons, but HCE is once again urged on after a "truce to lovecalls."  The reading ends with HCE about to resume his tale, and the brilliance of today's final sentence warrants a full quotation:  "Leave the letter that never begins to go find the latter that ever comes to end, written in smoke and blurred by mist and signed of solitude, sealed at night."