(251.21-253.18) Today's passage begins with a vision of Glugg as Izod's tutor. He would be a good one, covering tantalizing passages of Dante ("dantellising"), Galileo ("Galilleotto"), and Machiavelli ("Smachiavelluti"). It would be like "Headmaster Adam" teaching "Eva Harte" (or, as the Wake has it, Glugg would be her "toucher").
Now the time for Glugg and Chuff's confrontation has arrived. The two engage in a thrust-parry dialectic. Instead of the heated confrontation that we might expect, however, the exchange involves one side offering a blessing and the other offering thanks. The two "crown pretenders" become wrought together, and in the "transfusion" the Floras can no longer tell which is Glugg and which is Chuff. Unable to rely on their strongly held prejudices, they now rely on an inverse of Darwinism to discover who the victor will be: the "assent of man" will occur here through "naturel rejection."
As might be expected, the Glugg figure comes out of the confrontation dejected: "Creedless, croonless hangs his haughty. There end no moe red devil in the white of his eye." He realizes progress is impossible even over long stretches of history. Things will be the same for him as they are for "his grandson's grandson's grandson's grandson," just as it was for "the grandmother of the grandmother of his grandmother's grandmother." Nothing changes. "I have done it equals I so shall do," just as "look at me now means I once was otherwise." Glugg should ask Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John for the strength to stick by Izod, "by gum," and to not give her up without a plucky fight with "buckskin gloves."
The passage ends with what McHugh identifies as Glugg's third guess as to the riddle's solution: "But Noodynaady's actual ingrate tootle is of come into the garner mauve and they nice are stores of morning and buy me a bunch of iodines." This means that his guess is violet (or mauve). Obviously, this isn't the answer Izod had hinted at. That likely means more tears are coming soon.
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