"You knew me once but you won't know me twice."

(486.6-488.12)  The inquiry concerning the relationship between Shaun and Shem continues in today's reading, with a brief interlude.  "The old order changeth and lasts like the first," says one of the old men (I can't tell which, and McHugh admits that it's hard to prove that it's one or the other), recognizing that Shaun now stands in the role of the departed HCE.  He proceeds to perform a "little psychosinology" experiment, a kind of ritualistic vision quest.  He places a piece of "burial jade" shaped like the letter T upright against Shaun's temple and asks, "Do you see anything templar?"  Shaun says that he sees a French pastry cook, who stands for the exiled Shaun or Shem.  The old man then places the jade horizontally against Shaun's lips and asks, "What do you feel, liplove?"  Shaun says that he feels a lady with gold hair and white arms, who stands for either ALP or Isabel.  Finally, the old man inverts the jade and places it, upside down, against Shaun's breast and asks, "What do you hear, breastplate?"  Shaun replies that he hears "a hopper behidin the door slappin his feet in a pool of bran," indicating the otherworldly presence of HCE, prepared to hop back to life once again.

After expressing delight in the "irmages" of Shaun's "triptych vision," the old man asks Shaun whether it's ever occurred to him that he could be substituted by his brother, Shem.  Shaun has thought of this, going as far as trying on his brother's clothes, and in doing so hefelt that he was "stretching, in the shadow as I thought, the liferight out of myself in my ericulous imaginating."  Ultimately, he says, he's not himself at all "when I realise bimiselves how becomingly I to be going to become" -- he's constantly changing, and in order to be who he must be he must not be himself.

"O, is that the way with you, you craythur?" mocks the old man.  "In the becoming was the weared, wontnat!"  It's getting harder to tell whether it's Shaun or Shem who stands before the four, and the man asks, "Are you imitation Roma now or Amor now?"  Shaun refuses to answer the question and instead speaks of his imminent departure and subsequent return in a manner perhaps intended to further confuse his inquisitors.  "Gangang is mine and I will return," he says.  "Out of my name you call me, Leelander.  But in my shelter you'll miss me.  When Lapac walks backwords he's darkest horse in Capalisoot.  You knew me once but you won't know me twice."

The old man wonders whether Shaun is being truthful, and asks whether Shaun speaks as one or two.  Shaun says that Bruno and Nola have just explained the matter, and presents a complex proof of the idea that the twins Shaun and Shem stand in eternal opposition and reliance upon each other, "eternally provoking alio opposite equally as provoked."