—I fear many things: dogs, horses, firearms, the sea,thunderstorms, machinery, the country roads at night.
—But why do you fear a bit of bread?
—I imagine, Stephen said, that there is a malevolent reality behind those things I say I fear.
—Do you fear then, Cranly asked, that the God of the roman catholics would strike you dead and damn you if you made a sacrilegious communion?
—The God of the roman catholics could do that now, Stephen said. I fear more than that the chemical action which would be set up in my soul by a false homage to a symbol behind which are massed twenty centuries of authority and veneration.