Father Osuna had also joined the
party from the Casa, and Roldan, who had seen hundreds of horse-races
and was built on a more complex plan than his contemporaries, got as
close to the priest as he dared and gave him his undivided attention.
Padre Osuna was a man of unusual height and heaviness of build. His
black eyes were set close to his fine Roman nose. The mouth was so
tightly compressed that its original curves were quite destroyed, and
the intellectual development of the brow was very marked. His hands
exerted a peculiar fascination over Roldan. They were of huge size, even
for so big a man, lean and knotted, with square-tipped fingers. The skin
on them was fine and brown; it looked as soft as a woman's. He used them
a good deal when talking, and not ungracefully; but they seemed to claw
and grasp the air, to be independent of the arms hidden in the
voluminous sleeves of the smart brown cassock. Other people watched
those hands too--they seemed to possess a magnetism of their own; and
every one showed this priest great deference: he was one of the most
successful disciplinarians in the Department of California, a brilliant
speaker, an able adviser in matters of state, and a man of many social
graces.
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