"our all honoured christmastyde easteredman"

(589.12-590.30)  Now we reach the conclusion of Book III of Finnegans Wake.  Pretty exciting, I'd say.

Yesterday, we left off with HCE raking in the dough.  What did he do with his riches?  Luke says that he crept around at night on the prowl.  He lived out the age-old story, then:  "Humbly to fall and cheaply to rise, exposition of failures."  A succession of tragedies, which mirror stories from the Bible, befell him.  For instance, he experienced Adam's fall:  "First for a change of seven days license he wandered out of his farmer's health and so lost his early parishlife."  He also went through a flood like Noah when "a main chanced to burst and misflooded his fortunes, wrothing foulplay over his fives' court and his fine poultryyard wherein were spared a just two of a feather in wading room only."  The "crowning barleystraw" occurred "when an explosium of his distilleries deafdumped all his dry goods to his most favoured sinflute."  Penniless, he hit rock bottom, "weeping worrybound on his bankrump."  No one would give him a loan or pay any insurance money, for everyone believed him "a chameleon at last."  "His reignbolt's shot," Luke says.  "Never again!"

But this is not how we should ultimately judge HCE, argues Luke, as "the now nighs nearing as the yetst hies hin."  There will be a new day for HCE, "our all honoured christmastyde easteredman."

Luke's conclusion leads directly into John's very brief "[f]ourth position of solution."  John has the "[f]inest view from horizon" from which to present the "[t]ableau final."  He sees HCE and ALP sleeping peacefully just before the imminent dawn.  The four have worked the subject of HCE "to an inch of his core."  In parting, John presents a final image of ALP as she "blesses her bliss for to feel her funnyman's functions."

The chapter ends, as McHugh notes, with the audience applauding the play that has been presented to us throughout this chapter:  "Tiers, tiers and tiers.  Rounds."  It's not the most lyrical of the Wake's chapter endings, but it's suitably succinct in its recognition of our excitement for the book's final chapter.