"The mouth that tells not will ever attract the unthinking tongue . . . "

(68.11-70.13)  We last left off with the narrator describing the two young ladies of the night who may have caused HCE's downfall.  It was fortuitous to have left off where I did, since today's passage begins with the narrator bringing ALP into the scene.  HCE's wife is first called "Houri of the coast of emerald."  McHugh identifies "Houri" in his Annotations as a "nymph of Mohammedean paradise."  ALP is thus a nymph of the Emerald Isle, and also "arrah of the lacessive poghue" (A-L-P), that is (since McHugh translates "lacesso" as the Italian "I provoke"), an enticing provoker of kisses.  ALP was once a kind of temptress who "sent many a poor pucker packing to perdition, again and again."  HCE didn't quite understand her, though.  The narrator asks, didn't he "missbrand her behaveyous with iridescent huecry of down right mean false sop lap sick dope?"  (McHugh points out the musical scale at the end of that passage:  Do (down), re (right), mi (mean), etc . . . .)  For all the misunderstanding, though, in the end ALP was a queen and HCE was a king, and his eyes gazed ravenously upon her lips.  He can now hear her voice, but "by the beer of his profit, he cannot answer."  The narrator says that no monument needs to be placed to commemorate this tale, for the land itself serves as a witness.

There's a brief interlude exploring how gossip, violence, and blackmail will always rule the day.  But, "by memory inspired," the narrator "turn wheel again" (turns the wheel again, or turns we again) to the "whole of the wall" (the whole in the wall at Phoenix Park, or the whole of the law).  This wall/law has been there forever ("Ere ore or ire in Aarlund."), and it was here that HCE -- "the suroptimist" -- bought a shack by the wall and built it into a homestead.  At some point he constructed an "applegate" to keep donkeys off the property and to keep the cat from getting gout (or getting out or getting at the goat), and eventually the gate was "triplepatlockt" on HCE by his faithful friends to keep him on his property (and, it stands to reason, out of the park).

Suddenly (or, as the narrator says, "by the by"), the narrator draws a connection from this tale of the wall to "a northroomer, Herr Betreffender," who's another version of HCE.  (McHugh translates "Herr Betreffender" as German for "the person concerned" or the "before mentioned," HCE was previously depicted as carrying a fender, and he's also an offender.)  This foreigner is in town swapping broken Irish with broken German and reporting on the Fall of Adam.  How does this version of HCE fit in with the ones that came before?  That's for tomorrow's passage . . . .