a whore. Apocalypse. KITTY: And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for the funeral. PHILIP DRUNK: (Gravely) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe? PHILIP SOBER: (Gaily) c'était le sacré pigeon, Philippe. (Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair. And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a whore's shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.) LYNCH: (Laughs) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes. FLORRY: (Nods) Locomotor ataxy. ZOE: (Gaily) O, my dictionary. LYNCH: Three wise virgins. VIRAG: (Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips) She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. (He sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork) Messiah! He burst her tympanum. (With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm) Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk! (Ben Jumbo Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing bagslops.) BEN DOLLARD: (Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone) When love absorbs my ardent soul. (The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.) THE VIRGINS: (Gushingly) Big Ben! Ben my Chree! A VOICE: Hold that fellow with the bad breeches. BEN DOLLARD: (Smites his thigh in abundant laughter) Hold him now. HENRY: (Caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs) Thine heart, mine love. (He plucks his lutestrings) When first I saw... VIRAG: (Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting) Rats! (He yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an upward push of his parchmentroll) After having said which I took my departure. Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck! (Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocketcomb and gives a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his