not know much about it, but I feel it."

"Very well, very well, we shall be good friends. You must tell me all
sorts of things; how I envy you having travelled so much."

He spoke like a restless child, without sitting down. Although the
"Silenciario" offered him a chair at each of his flirtings round the
room, he wandered from side to side in his shabby cloak, his hat in
his hand--a poor worn-out hat with not a trace of pile left, knocked
in, with a layer of grease on its flaps, miserable and old, like the
cassock and the shoes. But in spite of this poverty the Chapel-master
had a certain refinement about him. His hair, rather too long for his
ecclesiastical dress, curled round his temples, and the dignified way
in which he folded his cloak round his body reminded one of the cloak
of a tenor at the opera. He had a sort of easy grace that betrayed the
artist who, under the priestly robes, was longing to get rid of them,
leaving them at his feet like a winding sheet.

Some deep notes from the bell, like distant thunder, floated into the
room through the cloister.

"Uncle, they are calling us to the choir," said the "Tato." "We ought
to have been in the Cathedral before now; it is nearly eight o'clock."

"It is true, lad. I am glad you were here to remind me; let us be
going."

Then he added, speaking to the musical priest:

"Don Luis, your mass is at eight o'clock. You can talk with Gabriel