Summary
After the American territory is increased yet further by the Gadsden Purchase, Father Latour must deal with a huge expansion of the size of his diocese. Father Vaillant goes on distant travels to California to negotiate and falls ill with malarial fever. Returning in May -- the month of Mary -- he finds that he has time to himself and his private devotions for the first time in a while. Father Latour also remarks that it is the first time a while that the two of them can be together in Santa Fe, though Father Vaillant points out that he is much more needed by the Indian and Mexican Catholics, who remain lost.
After Father Vaillant departs again, there is a night in December when Father Latour, missing his friend and feeling empty in his faith, is unable to sleep and walks at night to the sacristy. There he encounters Sada, an old Mexican woman who is more or less held in bondage by a family that denies her contact with other Mexicans or her Catholic faith. Sada had slipped away at great risk to try to worship; so, Father Latour leads her in worship, feeling inspired and refreshed by the strength of her faith.
Later, Father Latour sets out on travels with Jacinto and meets with his friend Eusabio, a Navajo leader. During a stay with Eusabio, Latour reflects upon his history in France with Father Vaillant and on how the two ran away to become priests.
Analysis
More so than other chapters, this chapter concerns itself with Father Latour's own faith and his relationship with his bosom friend, Father Vaillant.
Father Latour's December night chance encounter with Sada crystallizes his entire experience among the Indians and Mexicans of his diocese:
Never, as he afterward told Father Vaillant, had it been permitted him to behold such deep experience of the holy joy of religion as on that pale December night. He was able to feel, kneeling beside her, the preciousness of the things of the altar to her who was without possessions; the tapers, the image of the Virgin, the figures of the saints, the Cross that took away indignity from suffering and made pain and poverty a means of fellowship with Christ. Kneeling beside the much enduring bondwoman, he experienced those holy mysteries as he had done in his young manhood (218).
He is the priest who brings them religion, ritual, and spiritual succor, while, at the same time, he is just as much a man who must struggle with doubts about his faith and feelings of distance from God -- and who, therefore, can be inspired by the faith of others. It is also significant in this passage, as in so many others, that the story, observation, or realization is framed by his reporting the same to Father Vaillant, his friend; similarly, many of his experiences he recounts to Father Vaillant's sister Philomene through letter-writing. These two figures -- Vaillant and Philomene -- share in Father Latour's most personal and spiritual life.
