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.