Page:Death Comes for the Archbishop.pdf/175

 clothes to a monk from Mexico who was studying at his house, and who had not wherewithal to cover himself as winter came on.

The two priests had always talked shamelessly about each other. All Martinez’s best stories were about Lucero, and all Lucero’s were about Martinez.

“You see how it is,” Padre Lucero would say to the young men at a wedding party, “my way is better than old José Martinez’s. His nose and chin are getting to be close neighbours now, and a petticoat is not much good to him any more. But I can still rise upright at the sight of a dollar. With a new piece of money in my hand I am happier than ever; and what can he do with a pretty girl but regret?”

Avarice, he assured them, was the one passion that grew stronger and sweeter in old age. He had the lust for money as Martinez had for women, and they had never been rivals in the pursuit of their pleasures. After Trinidad was ordained and went to stay with his uncle, Father Lucero complained that he had formed gross habits living with Martinez, and was eating him out of house and home. Father Martinez told with delight how Trinidad sponged upon the parish at Arroyo Hondo, and went about poking his nose into one bean-pot after another.

When the Bishop could no longer remain deaf to the rebellion, he sent Father Vaillant over to Taos to publish the warning for three weeks and exhort the