Page:Creole Sketches.djvu/184

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154
CREOLE SKETCHES

words came from his lips with such a musical depth as when the longest strings of a great harp are touched by strong and skillful fingers. The face was characteristic — a true Latin face, with the strong keenness of the Roman eagle in its profile; eyes large and brilliant as a falcon's; eyebrows thick as mustaches, rising toward the temples, with a slightly sinister elevation; mustaches curling up toward the cheek-bones; and such a short black pointed beard as we see in the portraits of Velasquez. This handsome and daring face belonged, to a beautifully formed head, covered with the blackest curls possible to conceive — the head of an antique Roman soldier set upon a columnar neck. With the clear bronze of his skin, no more striking type of the finest of the Latin races could have been asked for by a painter.

Artista español de los primeros, he had been travelling with a Spanish opera com-