Death Comes for the Archbishop: Book Six

Antonio Olivares was the most intelligent and prosperous member of a large family of brothers and cousins, and he was for that time and place a man of wide experience, a man of the world.

She was pretty and accomplished, had been educated at a French convent, and had done much to Europeanize her husband.

The refinement of his dress and manners, and his lavish style of living, provoked half-contemptuous envy among his brothers and their friends.

Olivares's wife, Doña Isabella, was a devout Catholic, and at their house the French priests were always welcome and were most cordially entertained.

She was a trifle vain, it must be owned, and when she sang at all, insisted upon singing in three languages, never forgetting her husband's favourites.

But his eyes were lively, and the yellow spark in them was often most perceptible when he was quite silent.

Doña Isabella once remarked that her husband always gave Father Vaillant something good for the palate, and Father Latour something
good for the eye.

She came to visit her parents only once after they settled in Santa Fé, and she was a somewhat sombre figure in that convivial household.

One night, at a long-remembered New Year's party in his house, Olivares announced in the presence of his guests that before the new year was gone he meant to give to the Cathedral fund a sum sufficient to enable Father Latour to carry out his purpose.

The popular Commandant and the young lieutenant of cavalry were called back to Washington.

When this strange yellow boy played it, there was softness and languor in the wire strings--but there was also a kind of madness; the recklessness, the call of wild countries which all these men had felt and followed in one way or another.

Don Manuel Chavez, the handsomest man of the company, very elegant in velvet and broadcloth, with delicately cut, disdainful features,--one had only to see him cross the room, or to sit next him at dinner, to feel the electric quality under his cold reserve; the fierceness of some embitterment, the passion for danger.

The shepherds made a litter of saplings and their sheepskin coats and carried him into the village of Cebolleta, where he lay delirious for many days.

Years afterward, when Chavez came into his inheritance, he bought that beautiful valley in the San Mateo mountain where he had sunk unconscious under two noble oak trees.

Never reconciled to American rule, Chavez lived in seclusion when he was in Santa Fé.

Olivares had entrusted the management of his affairs to a young assistant.

The income therefrom was to be enjoyed by "my wife, Isabella Olivares, and her daughter, Inez Olivares," during their lives, and after their decease his property was to go to the Church, to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.

Antonio had been a promiscuous lover in his young days, and his brothers held that Inez was the offspring of some temporary attachment, and had been adopted by Doña Isabella.

O'Reilly had sent to New Orleans for an attested copy of the marriage record of the Olivares couple, and the birth certificate of Señorita Inez.

The curls about her neck and ears were pale, too--quite ashen.

"You understand, my child," he began briskly, "that your husband's brothers are determined to disregard his wishes, to defraud you and your daughter, and, eventually, the Church.

Doña Isabella became pallid with fright.

Father Latour checked his impetuous Vicar, and sat down on the sofa beside Madame Olivares, feeling very sorry for her and speaking very gently.

Looking merely at the temporal aspect of the case, you would find poverty hard to bear.

The Bishop would not go to the court hearing, but Father Vaillant was there, standing in the malodorous crowd (there were no chairs in the court room), and his knees shook under him when the young lawyer, with the fierceness born of fright, poked his finger at his client.