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[ Aetat. 27-29 ] J O Y C Eand asked him to rewrite the whole passage. Joyce declined to do so,pointing out that Grant Richards raised no objection to the passage whenEdward VII was alive, and therefore an Irish publisher had no reason toobject when Edward VII was dead. Roberts did not reply. The publication,while not finallygiven over, was delayed from month to month.While Dubliners was blocked, the Volta stumbled and fell. Under Novak'smanagement the theater failed to break even. Stanislaus suspected,perhaps rightly, that his brother's neglect of the enterprise had doomedit. Certainly James would have been able to sense the quirky turns of theDublin public better than a Triestine bicycle shop proprietor. On theother hand, his reputation was offputting. 'Are you a Catholic? You can'tgo in there,' someone waiting for a ticket was told. 49 The heavy emphasison Italian filmsprobably did not help much either. The partners decidedthey must cut the theater adrift so as to avoid losing more than the 1600pounds they had already invested, of which Novak had himself contributedthe larger share. Joyce asked his father to offer the Volta to theProvincial Theatre Company, an English firm;but before John Joycebestirred himself, Novak negotiated the sale to them for a thousandpounds, a loss of almost 40 per cent. 50Joyce labored briefly under theimpression that he would receive forty pounds as his share, but his partners,pointing to their losses, undeceived him. He got nothing or almostnothing, and complained bitterly to Schmitz that he had been cheated,a charge that was hardly justified. Schmitz sent him a consolatory letter:'You were so excited over the cynematograph-affair that during the wholetravel [that is, a trip Schmitz took] I remembered your face so startled bysuch wickedness. And I must add to the remarks I already have done thatyour surprise at being cheated proves that you are a pure literary man.To be cheated proves not yet enough. But to be cheated and to presenta great surprise over that and not to consider it as a matter of course isreally literary.' 51In July, during the days immediately preceding the Volta's finalsale,Stanislaus and James became more deeply embroiled than ever before. Aseries of petty quarrels had arisen to prepare for a more serious break.One was over a library card which James wished to borrow; Stanislausthundered, 'You never return anything I lend you,' and made as if toleave. James put his foot in the door to prevent its being closed, andargued until Stanislaus at last turned over the card. 52The aggregation ofJoyce sisters around James and Nora did nothing to alleviate Stanislaus'sresentment; Eileen and Eva seemed to have joined the conspiracy to keephis pockets empty. Once Eileen asked him for money for a new blouse,which he gave only to discover that her request had been a trick of Jamesto get money for household expenses. His stomach was often empty, too;to his demands for dinner (he paid for his board), his sisters sometimessnappishly replied, 'We didn't come to Trieste to stay in and cook foryou.' 53On occasion he came punctually for dinner at 9:30 o'clock to311