Christian fiction; Clergy -- Fiction; Historical fiction; New Mexico -- Fiction
Toward the close of day, in the short twilight after the candles were
lighted, the old Bishop seemed to become restless, moved a little, and
began to murmur; it was in the French tongue, but Bernard, though he
caught some words, could make nothing of them. He knelt beside the bed:
"What is it, Father? I am here."
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.
When the Cathedral bell tolled just after dark, the Mexican population
of Santa Fé fell upon their knees, and all American Catholics as well.
Many others who did not kneel prayed in their hearts. Eusabio and the
Tesuque boys went quietly away to tell their people; and the next
morning the old Archbishop lay before the high altar in the church he
had built.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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