The old man smiled. "I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived."
Father Latour tells his young protege, Bernard Ducrot, that he wants to die in Santa Fe. His feeling of dying, however, does not come so much from weakness or illness, but rather from the fullness of the life he has lived in service of his diocese.
It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it. The Hopi villages that were set upon rock mesas were made to look like the rock on which they sat, were imperceptible at a distance.
Father Latour -- speaking in free indirect discourse -- observes the differences between the European way of relating to nature, whereby they distinguish themselves from nature and seek to master it, to an Indian way, which emphasizes harmonization instead.
The rock, when one came to think of it, was the utmost expression of human need; even mere feeling yearned for it; it was the highest comparison of loyalty in love and friendship. Christ Himself had used that comparison for the disciple to whom He gave the keys of His Church. And the Hebrews of the Old Testament, always being carried captive into foreign lands, -- their rock was an idea of God, the only thing their conquerors could not take from them.
Father Latour observes that the mesa on which Acoma is built was the shelter of Indians hunted by white men. Ironically, this evokes for him a comparison with Christ and Christian faith under persecution, even though much of the persecution the Indians face is backed by a Christian ideology.
The new Vicar must be a young man, of strong constitution, full of zeal, and above all, intelligent. He will have to deal with savagery and ignorance, with dissolute priests and political intrigue. He must be a man to whom order is necessary — as dear as life.
Father Ferrand advises the Spanish cardinal to appoint as vicar for the new Apostolic Vicariate in New Mexico someone (he has Jean Marie Latour in mind) who will be suited to the task of, as he sees it, civilizing an uncivilized land. As Father Latour's engagements with the local Mexican and Indian populace and his confrontation with Padre Martinez demonstrates, Father Ferrand was right in his assessment.
“Bernard,” the old Bishop would murmur, “God has been very good to let me live to see a happy issue to those old wrongs. I do not believe, as I once did, that the Indian will perish. I believe that God will preserve him.”
Father Latour tells Bernard Ducrot that he has been concerned for the Indian people for a long time. Tribes such as the Navajos, lead by Manuelito, faced annihilation by the American army but were eventually able to get recognition from the American government, allowing them to return to their ancestral lands.
The criminals with whom he would have to do in Colorado would hardly be of that type, he told himself.
Just before going to Colorado, Father Vaillant hears the story of Ramon Armajillo, a young man who was sentenced to hang for stabbing a man in the heat of anger. Armajillo, just before being hanged, had sewed a pair of tiny boots for a statuette of Mary in his hometown, demonstrating his religious faith and general moral sense, of which Father Vaillant expects he will not see much in the men of the gold rush.
Comete tu cola, Martinez, comete tu cola! (Eat your tail, Martinez, eat your tail!)
Father Lucero's last words seem to be damning his friend Padre Martinez, who predeceased him. Father Lucero's son, Trinidad, goes about the town saying that his father has seen Padre Martinez in hell, which implicitly works as a condemnation of the old priest who had ruled the town.
He found himself in a lofty cavern, shaped somewhat like a Gothic chapel, of vague outline, — the only light within was that which came through the narrow aperture between the stone lips.
Father Latour is shown by his Indian guide Jacinto into a secret cave sacred to Jacinto's tribe when the two escape from a snowstorm. As usual, he associates what he sees at first with the familiar things of his faith; in this case, he is not far off the mark: Jacinto reveals to him the religious importance of the place, while asking him not to tell anyone else about it.
The young Bishop was not alone in the exaltation of that hour; beside him rode Father Joseph Vaillant, his boyhood friend, who had made this long pilgrimage with him and shared his dangers. The two rode into Santa Fe together, claiming it for the glory of God.
Although we first meet Father Latour alone, we learn that he is, in fact, traveling together with Father Vaillant, his childhood friend and companion during his years as bishop in an unfamiliar land. Father Latour will later revisit this place after his friend has died and remember how they entered the city that would become the seat of his diocese.
He continued to murmur, to move his hands a little, and Magdalena thought he was trying to ask for something, or to tell them something. But in reality the Bishop was not there at all; he was standing in a tip-tilted green field among his native mountains, and he was trying to give consolation to a young man who was being torn in two before his eyes by the desire to go and the necessity to stay. He was trying to forge a new Will in that devout and exhausted priest; and the time was short, for the diligence for Paris was already rumbling down the mountain gorge.
As Father Latour is dying, he makes one last return in memory, after the several actual returns he made to places such as the road to Santa Fe, to important moments in his life he shared with his dear friend Father Vaillant. Not coincidentally, this scene, in which he bolstered Father Vaillant's faith to run away from his family and become a missionary priest, is one of great emotional intensity and deals with how the two friends support each other in spiritual matters.
