"Vouchsafe me more soundpicture!"

(569.17-571.26)  As today's passage begins, a priest, "Monsigneur of Deublan," blesses the crowd and begins a great feast.  All sorts of food is available:  chicken, pigeon, rabbit, pheasant, trout, salmon, sturgeon, capon, and lobsters, to name a handful.  In the midst of the feast, songs are sung to honor the king and, presumably, HCE:  "Old Finncoole, he's a mellow old saoul when he swills his fuddlers free!  Poppop array!  For we're all jollygame fellhellows which nobottle can deny!"  Soon actors are called for.  Among the plays proposed are "two genitalmen of Veruno" (Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona) and "all for love of fair pentient" (Dryden's All for Love).  After a few fine performances, which draw shouts of "Bravose!" and "Bravossimost!," a moment of silence is called for:  "The royal nusick their show shall shut with songslide to nature's solemn silence."  Numerous dances follow, causing Mark to remark, "Some wholetime in hot town tonight!"  This glorious day should be coming soon, he adds, "but it is never here that one today."  (Campbell and Robinson suggest that this scene of HCE's triumph suggests the anticipatory euphoria of foreplay experienced by HCE in bed with his wife, which makes some sense to me.)

All this talk prompts one of the listeners to ask Mark questions about HCE.  Is he ever in ill health?  No, he's "exceedingly herculeneous" (I'm reading this as like Hercules).  "One sees how he is lot stoutlier than of formerly," says Mark, before comparing HCE to Abraham.  "One would say him to hold whole a litteringture of kidlings under his aphroham."  Has he been married for long?  Yes, "ever since so long time in Hurtleforth."  He has "two fine mac sons" that, when combined, form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts:  "a superfine mick want they mack metween them."  Someone asks Mark why he's leering again.  "I am not leering, I pink you pardons," he replies.  "I am highly sheshe sherious." 

At this point, a subtle shift seems to occur, but it's possible we've been shifting all along.  Mark, who may now be one of the sons, asks, "Do you not must want to go somewhere on the present?"  It becomes apparent as the paragraph proceeds that the "somewhere" is the toilet, for someone has to urinate (they take a walk "till the number one").  The dialogue continues as they pass through the hall, indicating that Kevin and Jerry, who have been spying on their parents, are walking through the house to the "littleeasechapel" (or bathroom).  They look at pictures on the wall depicting war and nature, and eventually they seem to be joined by Isabel.  As one boy uses the facilities, the other speaks with her about her "lifesighs . . . after that swollen one" (HCE).  Isabel replies, "I am not sighing, I assure, but only I am soso sorry about all in my saarasplace."  As the reading for today comes to an end, one of the children remarks on the parents, whose noises keep the children constantly aware of their presence in the house:  "Always I am hearing them.  Horsehem coughs enough.  Annshee lispes privily."