t was the disproportion between his shrunken body and his immense
head. The forehead, round and prominent, seemed to crush with its
weight the dark and irregular features, much pitted by smallpox.
He was very ugly, but still the expression of his blue eyes, the
brilliancy of his white and regular teeth, and the ingenuous smile,
almost childlike, that played on his lips, gave his face that
sympathetic expression which showed him to be one of those simple
souls wrapped up in their artistic fancies.

"And so this gentleman is the brother of whom you have spoken to me so
often," said he, hearing the introduction made by Esteban.

He held out his hand in a friendly way to Gabriel. They both looked
very sickly, but their bodily infirmities seemed to be a bond of
attraction.

"As the senor has studied in the seminary," said the Chapel-master,
"he will know something about music."

"It is the only thing that I remember of all those studies."

"But having travelled so much all over the world, you must have heard
a great deal of good music."

"That is so. Music is to me the most pleasing of all the arts. I do
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 mus