The Trip

El viaje del padre Latour en aquellos días es sacrificado: enfermedades, sed, peligros de ataques de bandidos, indios, etc. Se sustenta en el sacrificio de Jesús para seguir adelante. Del clásico de Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop.

On a long caravan trip across Texas this man had had some experience of thirst, as the party with which he travelled was several times put on a meagre water ration for days together.  But he had not suffered then as he did now.  Since morning he had had a feeling of illness; the taste of fever in his mouth, and alarming seizures of vertigo.  As these conical hills pressed closer and closer upon him, he began to wonder whether his long travel from the mountains of Auvergne were possibly to end here.  He reminded himself of that cry, extracted from his Saviour on the Cross, "J'ai soif!"  Of all our Lord's physical sufferings, only one, "I thirst," rose to His lips.  Empowered by long training, the young priest removed himself from his own consciousness and meditated upon the anguish of his Lord.  The Passion of Jesus became for him the only reality; the need of his own body was but a part of that conception.

His mare stumbled, breaking his mood of contemplation.  He was sorrier for his beasts than for himself.  He, supposed to be the intelligence of the party, had got the poor animals into this interminable desert of ovens.  He was afraid he had been absent-minded, had been pondering his problem instead of leading the way.

His problem was how to recover a Bishopric.  He was a Vicar Apostolic, lacking a Vicarate.  He was thrust out; his flock would have none of him.

The traveller was Jean Marie Latour, consecrated Vicar Apostolic of New Mexico and Bishop of Agathonica in partibus at Cincinnati a year ago--and ever since then he had been trying to reach his Vicarate.  No one in Cincinnati could tell him how to get to New Mexico--no one had ever been there.  Since young Father Latour's arrival in America, a railroad had been built through from New York to Cincinnati; but there it ended.  New Mexico lay in the middle of a dark continent.  The Ohio merchants knew of two routes only.  One was the Santa Fe trail from St. Louis, but at that time it was very dangerous because of Comanche Indian raids.  His friends advised Father Latour to go down the river to New Orleans, from there by boat to Galveston, across Texas to San Antonio, and to end up New Mexico along the Rio Grande valley.  This he had done, but with what misadventures!

His steamer was wrecked and sunk in the Galveston harbour, and he had lost all his worldly possessions except his books, which he saved at the risk of his life.  He crossed Texas with a traders' caravan, and approaching San Antonio he was hurt in jumping from an overturning wagon, and had to lie for three months in the crowded house of a poor Irish family, waiting for his injured leg to get strong… (From Death Comes to the Archbishop, by Willa Cather, en easier English.)

Vocabulary

In partibus: obispo en cualquier lugar, sea o no un país católico.

Related posts

One Minute, Death Comes for the Archbishop

Resources

La muerte llama al obispo, resumen

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