Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James Read Online Free PDF Page B

since catching hepatitis and starving myself toward health. My heart went out to her, furthering my misgivings about my mental metaphors. I couldn’t help wondering if there was some way to share the Good News with her—that if a seemingly hopeless case like me could slim down, perk up, and stride out, maybe she could too. All she had to do was eat less, eat right, detox from the prescription drugs, change her attitude, and get lots of exercise, without viewing any of the above as a “sacrifice.” Because if sacrifice was perceived, then failure was guaranteed. The real trick, as she clearly knew, seeing as she was out here, obviously suffering but with a smile on her face, was harnessing will power and self-awareness and.…
    “Who are you talking to?” Alison asked.
    “Was I talking?”
    “It was either you or a ghost,” she said. important stopover or starting point on fa n
    “Caesar’s ghost, maybe,” I retorted. “Or Charlemagne’s.”
    Charlemagne! The famous Valbeton lay ahead of us, pushing other thoughts out of my head. The dirt road turned into a trail that tipped up and ran over loose rocks. In my mind’s ear I heard the hooves of Charlemagne’s cavalry, but I failed to hear the blast of Roland’s horn. At the crest, among swaying pine trees, we turned to cast farewell glances at Vézelay and the determined tortoise far below.
    In the opposite direction, to the southeast stretched five ridges cloaked with fir forests and leafing deciduous trees surrounded by fields, pastures, and vineyards—and not a single paved road. Paradise!
    The unassuming bowl beneath us turned out to be Valbeton. In theory it had been the scene of knights tilting on Charlemagne’s round trip from Aachen, Germany, to Spain. Vineyards flanked the trail. Grapevines mossy with age grew on grassy slopes. The vineyards looked to be organic, a hopeful sign. In the distance, grape-growers burned cuttings and passed around a bottle of clear liquid, the contents of which they tipped into their mouths. We were on the section of trail we’d spotted earlier from Fontaines Salées. Thinking again of Roland, I looked down at my boots and, thunderstruck, stooped to pick up an old cow’s horn.
    “Roland’s horn?” I asked, turning it over. The pattern of Alison’s lips indicated to me that this wasn’t the famous Oliphant. A bone, then? And not from an animal. “A human tibia, perhaps?”
    Alison recoiled. “Roland died on the Spanish border and was buried in Aix,” she said, shaking her head.
    “Roland died on the Spanish border and was buried in what the French call Aix-la-Chapelle,” I retorted. “That’s Aachen, in Germany, Charlemagne’s capital. They brought his body back to Aachen on this trail. Don’t you see?”
    If it wasn’t Roland’s horn, I reasoned, maybe it was one of his lost bones. Or maybe it had belonged to another knight who’d died at Roncevaux. Girart de Roussillon, for instance. Why not? His body had been brought up this trail to the abbey he founded at Vézelay, hadn’t it?
    Before Alison could call me a fantasist, I knocked the mud off Roland’s bone and dropped it into a zip-lock bag. “Specimen one.”
    “Are you planning to carry that horse bone across France to Spain?”
    “I might,” I said, stowing it before she could reply. “At least as far as Cluny. This is how relics are born.”
    VILLAGE IDIOTS AND THE FRENCH DESERT
    Steep, rock-strewn and slippery, secular hiking trail GR-13 snaked down from a plateau into Foissy-lès-Vézelay. The rock-built village of leprous old houses seemed hacked and lifted from the Appalachians, the red-necked heartland of Americana. Hunting dogs howled from fragrant farmhouses. Chickens clucked, reminding us of the etymology of “Gaul”—the name comes from “galli,” meaning roosters in Latin and Italian. A few fearful locals scrambled for cover at our approach, shotguns at the ready. To say Foissy hadn’t yet been gentrified is gross