The reading was stopped - midway of a long paragraph - at "... upon the menopause... "(14.971)
Summary:
Mulligan's attention now turns to the stranger among them, asking him - ironically - whether he (the stranger) was in need of any professional assistance that they could give. As the stranger, who, in fact, is Bloom, answers quite seriously that he has come to see about a lady, Mr. Dixon takes his chance to poke fun at Mulligan using bombastic medical terms.
Next it is Alec Bannon's turn. Written in the style of the Irish novelist, Laurence Sterne (1713-68), this section describes how Bannon starts talking in a flowery language about his meeting a girl (Milly), of her beauty, etc. What follows is another play of words with double meanings. Does Bannon really feel that he should have taken his cloak along or something else, does the marchand de capotes (14.776) he refers to mean a cloak merchant or a merchant of condoms? After all this episode is mainly about sterility and fertility.
With this kind of bantering going on, the style changes again to that of the 18th century Anglo-Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), the author of The Vicar of Wakefield. A bell rings. Nurse Callan enters and speaks in a low tone to Mr. Dixon. The room breaks out again in ribaldry once she leaves. Dixon rebukes them, and leaves the room to go and attend to Mrs. Purefoy, who has just given birth.
Attention and style change again. Attention to the musings of Bloom, style to that of another Anglo-Irish essayist and political theorist, Edmund Burke (1729-1797). Bloom reflects upon the raucous behavior of the young men around him. As always, he is ready to find excuses for his fellow human beings, attributing such boisterous behavior as he is witnessing to their age.
At this point, the novel questions - in the style of the political satirist, Junius -, what right Bloom, an outsider, has to have such thoughts. After all it seems that not everything is alright at his own home (. . . a seedfield that lies fallow for the want of the ploughshare (14.929)), and as he has a habit reprehensible at puberty . . . (14.930), a reference to his masturbating on the Sandycove beach. (See episode 13).
