the thorn birds colleen mccullough

"Younger than I thought. Even so, they don't send priests like you to
places like Gilly. What did you do, to make them send someone like
you out here into the back of beyond?"
"I insulted the bishop," he said calmly, smiling. "You must have!
But I can't think a priest of your peculiar talents can be happy in a
place like Gillanbone."
"It is God's will."
"Stuff and nonsense! You're here because of human failings-your
own and the bishop's. Only the Pope is infallible. You're utterly out
of your natural element in Gilly, we all know that, not that we're not
grateful to have someone like you for a change, instead of the
ordained remittance men they send us usually. But your natural
element lies in some corridor of ecclesiastical power, not here
among horses and sheep. You'd look magnificent in cardinal's red."
"No chance of that, I'm afraid. I fancy Gillanbone is not exactly the
epicenter of the Archbishop Papal Legate's map. And it could be
worse. I have you, and I have Drogheda."
She accepted the deliberately blatant flattery in the spirit in which it
was intended, enjoying his beauty, his attentiveness, his barbed and
subtle mind; truly he would make a magnificent cardinal. In all her
life she could not remember seeing a better-looking man, nor one
who used his beauty in quite the same way. He had to be aware of
how he looked: the height and the perfect proportions of his body,
the fine aristocratic features, the way every physical element had
been put together with a degree of care about the appearance of the
finished product God lavished on few of His creations. From the
loose black curls of his head and the startling blue of his eyes to the