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[Aetat. 38] (^~~~^\ °Y C E 4 9?My latest is this. 1 (Moly is tjie gift of Hermes, god of public ways, and isthe invisible influerice_(P r^yer, chance, agility, presence of mind, power ofrecuperation) which saves in case of accident. This would cover immunityfrom syphilis. . . . Hermes is the god of signposts: i.e. he is, especially fora traveller like Ulysses, the point at which roads parallel merge and roadscontrary also. He is an accident of providence. In this special case his plantmay be said to have many leaves, indifference due to masturbation, pessimismcongenital, a sense of the ridiculous, sudden fastidiousness in somedetail, experience. 62He hoped to finish Circe, 'the last adventure,' 63before Christmas, andfinally, on December 20, after having rewritten the episode from start tofinish six or seven or eight or nine times (the count varied), he pronouncedit done. 64In a rare moment of appraisal he commented toFrancini Bruni, i think it is the strongest thing I have written.' 6SIt would have been agreeable to know who would publish Ulysses, butfor the moment no plan was firm.On August 25 Miss Weaver had togive up her last hope for an English edition printed in England, whenthe last of a series of printers decided not to risk it. Rodker's notion ofprinting in Paris was still possible, but an American edition was by farthe most promising plan. B. W. Huebsch had published A Portrait andDubliners in 1916, Exiles and Chamber Music in 1918, and had expressedhis interest in Ulysses. There was, however, the fact to reckonwith that the United States Post Office had confiscated and burned fourissues of the Little Review because of the episodes from Ulysses containedin them. It seemed likely that the government would prosecute the publisherfor obscenity. John Quinn suggested in December that the editionbe privately printed and limited to 1500 copies, of which half would besold in Europe. The price would be $12.50, and Joyce would receive athousand pounds, or so he wrote Ettore Schmitz on January 5, 1921.(The actual amount suggested by Quinn was $2000-$3000.) The publisherwould be Huebsch or perhaps Boni and Liveright, whose Parisagent, Leon Fleischman, had come to know Joyce recently and evincedan interest in securing the rights for Ulysses. Since this firmhad publishedHuneker's Painted Veils, they might be willing to risk prosecution66again. But the firstdecision was up to Huebsch, and he was hard put toit to make up his mind: whether to risk a jail sentence and fine,or tolose the book to another publisher. Joyce was annoyed by what seemedto him a want of alacrity, but in the atmosphere of censorship in 1921Huebsch's hesitation was understandable. In an unguarded moment Joyceremarked jocularly to Ezra Pound, 'No country outside of Africa willprint it.' For the moment he was right.The production of Exiles was also blocked for the time being. Lugne-Poe vacillated about the play during August, then in October informedJoyce he and Suzanne Despres would produce it during December or