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Last came the former tailor’s apprentice Bloom, Oscar Valdemar Napoleon. His complexion inclined more to gray, for he had had to atone with a nine months’ sentence for the theft of a jacket hung out for show—this being, to be sure, his second trip to the establishment. He had in his right breast pocket, besides his birth certificate with its less flattering annotations, the sum of eighty crowns inserted in a blue envelope, together with a certificate of good conduct at Langholm from the prison director.

That was not much to represent nine months’ work, but he had also had his board and lodging meanwhile. For him it was in any case a considerable sum, and it had been besides a lever for many future plans, most of which rested on clear improbabilities, for many dreams of a new life, for happiness and prosperity and general respect. This had been especially the case during those last weeks when, in consideration of his rapidly approaching freedom, he had been spared the humiliation of being shaved, for he had felt his manly self-esteem sprout afresh and grow in rivalry with the bristles on his upper lip and chin. But now, when he was actually free, when he felt the light, cool breeze of the summer morning fan about his temples and heard it rustling in the big trees, all of these plans were pushed somewhat into the background as if of themselves, of course only until a later time, only for a few hours or perhaps a day, and a single great emotion of happiness rose up in him and swept him along as though in a vertigo. Furthermore he was very hungry, because he had hardly touched his Langholm fare on that last morning, and he thought with yearning and satisfaction of a little restaurant on Brenchurch Street which he knew from of old, and of a great beefsteak with onions and one or maybe two bottles of beer—only think of it, beer!