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[Aetat. 40-41 ] J O Y C E535ing in to use their bedroom as a firingposition, and decided to leave atonce. Her irritation with her husband was quickly dispelled by the newemergency; when Joyce heard from her he brilliantly arranged to have aplane go to Galway for his family, but she did not wait for it. She andthe children boarded the train for Dublin with relief only to have thetroops of both factions begin to fireat it. Nora and Lucia dove to thefloor, while Giorgio, prouder but less reasonable, steadfastly kept his seat.So did an old Irishman who sucked his pipe, looked at the boy, and said,'Aren't you going to get down?' 'No.' 'You're right,' said the old man,'they never shoot straight. They're probably shooting blanks anyhow.' 50No one was hurt, and Michael Healy, when told in Dublin of theiradventure, thought it merely funny. 51But he obligingly put them on theboat for Holyhead that same night, and they went back to Paris at once,Nora's dissatisfaction with her life there cancelled out. Joyce was delightedto see them. He did not laugh about the attack,* instead heinterpreted it as really aimed at himself, and old Dublin friends like C. P.Curran, who visited him in Paris, found him preposterous on the subject.But a belief in the malevolence of certain people in Dublin remainedessential to Joyce's understanding of his own situation. He reacted to theaffair as strenuously as William Blake to Hayley's seemingly innocentovertures.He made up his mind to travel nonetheless, noting that 'the watershave subsided a little after the launch of a certain dreadnought.' 52InMay 1922 he planned to go to London. But during the month his iritisrecurred, and became so painful that he consulted a well-known Frenchophthalmologist, Dr. Victor Morax, 53on May 23. In his notes the doctorwrote that Joyce blamed the origin of his ailment upon a night's drinkingat Pirano in 1910, after which he had spent the early hours of the morningon the ground. This had started arthritic pains in his right shoulderand left the deltoid muscle in his right arm atrophied. Siedler's operationon the right eye in 1917 had been fairly successful, though the visionwas impaired; but the iritis had now spread to the left eye. With Morax'streatment it improved a little, but there was always blood in the interiorof the eye, and glaucoma was incipient. At the end of May Joyce had aburst of new pain, and telephoned Morax, who, unable to come himself,sent his student, Dr. Pierre Merigot de Treigny, to bring him some relief.When the door of the room at 9 rue de l'Universite was opened to theyoung doctor, he was astonished by the disorder: trunks half empty, clotheshanging everywhere, toilet accessories spread on chairs, tables, and mantelpiece.Wrapped in a blanket and squatting on the floorwas a manwith dark glasses who proved to be Joyce, and facing him in the sameposture was Nora. Between them stood a stewpan with a chicken carcass,* The only incident that amused him in the Irish Civil War was Gogarty's escape fromI.R.A. troops by plunging into the Liffey and swimming to safety.