Death Comes for the Archbishop Book 9, Chapter 5 Summary

  • After lunch, Archbishop Latour pretends to sleep for a while: all he wants is to be alone. He thinks a lot about being young, back when Father Vaillant was still alive and they hung out together all the time. He even remembers all the way back to when they were friends in France.
  • Leaving for North America was a difficult thing for both of them, since they knew their families would never agree to let them go to a place so dangerous and unknown.
  • But both Latour and Vaillant wanted to make a difference in their church by bringing it to places it had never been before.
  • Eventually, Latour and Vaillant disguised themselves and snuck out of France on a boat. It was an extremely hard decision for Vaillant, who was devoted to both the church and his father.
  • Latour thinks back on the day he first received word that Father Vaillant was dead. It took him a long time to believe it, since he had seen Vaillant come back from near-death situations so many times.
  • Back in those days, Latour had taken a train all the way to Denver for the funeral. This train wasn't even close to being built when Vaillant first went there. But the closer we get to the end of this book, the more we realize just how much time has passed since Vaillant left for Colorado.