DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP
in the whole Far West, for that matter,—big enough for his Blanchet’s funeral. For two days before, the populations of villages and mining camps had been streaming down the mountains; they slept in wagons and tents and barns; they made a throng like a National Convention in the convent square. And a strange thing happened at that funeral:
Father Revardy, the French priest who had gone from Santa Fé to Colorado with Father Vaillant more than twenty years before, and had been with him ever since as his curate and Vicar, had been sent to France on business for his Bishop. While there, he was told by his physician that he had a fatal malady, and he at once took ship and hurried homeward, to make his report to Bishop Vaillant and to die in the harness. When he got as far as Chicago, he had an acute seizure and was taken to a Catholic hospital, where he lay very ill. One morning a nurse happened to leave a newspaper near his bed; glancing at it, Father Revardy saw an announcement of the death of the Bishop of Colorado. When the Sister returned, she found her patient dressed. He convinced her that he must be driven to the railway station at once. On reaching Denver he entered a carriage and asked to be taken to the Bishop’s funeral. He arrived there when the services were nearly half over, and no one ever forgot the sight of this dying man, supported by the cab-driver and
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