"Let us leave theories there and return to here's here."

(75.1-77.27)  The fourth chapter of Finnegans Wake picks up right where the previous chapter left off:  with HCE sleeping (or dead).  He's like a lion in a zoo thinking about the lilies of the Nile, dreaming about his fall from grace.  It may be that he's dreaming about the two young women from the park, "those lililiths undeveiled which had undone him, gone for age," and that he's unaware of the false friends who attend his wake, "the watchful treachers at his wake, and theirs to stay."  It's possible that before he went to sleep he prayed for the Cad, particularly (and mercifully) that the Cad might be the head of a distinguished dynasty.  He also has an idea for the formation of a new type of prison that will promote the obedience of citizens and the health of society.

After this brief sort of introduction, the narrator turns our attention toward the stolen coffin that made a cameo appearance in the last chapter.  We now learn that the coffin is for HCE, and that while HCE was still alive "[a]ny number of conservative public bodies" made a gift to him of "a protem grave" in Moyelta, which McHugh writes is a plain in Dublin where victims of the plague died and were buried.  

The narrator describes the idyllic area where HCE is to be buried, and eventually calls it an "underground heaven, or mole's paradise."  We then get a description of how the underground tomb was constructed.  The action of construction is perhaps paradoxically more akin to warlike destruction, with its "reinvented T.N.T.," "aerial thorpeto," and "tins of improved ammonia lashed to her shieldplated gunwale."  It's an interesting thing, using the machinery of death to build a haven for the dead.

Anyway, after lining the tomb with "rotproof bricks and mortar," the grave's "misterbilder," who is named Castlevillainous, retires to his towers (which McHugh notes correspond to the seven towers of the Tower of London).  In recognition of his efforts, additional public councils present Castlevillainous with a stone slab bearing "a very fairworded instance of falsemeaning adamelegy:  We have done ours gohellt with you, Heer Herewhippit, overgiven it, skidoo!"

I found it interesting how, even though the "action" of the fourth chapter picks up from the third chapter, there's a marked shift in tone (which I can't quite put my finger on at the moment) between the two chapters.  I struggled at times reading through today's passage, a lot of which was probably attributable to Joyce's heavy use of Danish words and phrases.  I feel like I'm getting a better handle on the Wake in general, though (and I'm starting to get back into the rhythm of getting the reading done every day, too).