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iv J A M E S [ 1894-1898 ]1894-1898Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfullyholy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might nothave a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that thefubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street.O si, certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw.More tell me, more still! On the top of the Howth tram alone crying tothe rain: naked women! What about that, eh?—Ulysses (40 [49-50])His Belvedere days supplied Joyce with an arena in which, like inexperiencedgladiators, body and mind might clash. He became more activelydifferent from his parents and teachers. At the beginning he readErckmann-Chatrian's nostalgic novels and at the end of his schooldayshe read Ibsen's sardonic plays. As he said in A Portrait, his soul threwoff the cerements that covered it and spurned the grave of boyhood. 1Hisgraveclothes included, by one of those curious transvaluations of Christianimages that Joyce was to delight in, his allegiance to the Church;and his resurrection, for which Christ's was so useful a descriptive metaphor,was as an artist rather than as a risen god. His sins became serious,and his sense of sin, 'that sense of separation and loss,' 2brought him toconsciousness, from which vantage point he sloughed off all but the vestigesof Christian guilt. He went through a series of violent changes andemerged from them somber and aloof, except with the few friends towhom he exhibited his joy, his candor, his bursting youth; even withthese he was a little strange, never wholly companionable because eachtime he laid bare his soul he importuned greater loyalty, until friendshipbecame for them almost an impossible burden of submission.When the family had to leave Millbourne Avenue, in late 1894, JohnJoyce moved them back into town. He found a house for his elevendependents and himself at 17 North Richmond Street. The short, blindstreet was well known to his children, for the Christian Brothers' school42