The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

are tramping the Rue St. Jacques.” “You and your son,” said I, “make me ashamed that I am not foot-slogging the whole way. Unfortunately, I am the victim of time and I cannot linger on the way.”
    “Chacun fait ce qu’il peut,” answered the young pilgrim. “Many pilgrims go by train, by car, by motor bus, and soon they will go by aeroplane to Santiago, just as they go to Lourdes, Fatima and Rome.”
    “St. James,” said the old pilgrim, “picked up a sick pilgrim in the eleventh century and carried him on his flying horse in the twinkling of an eye to Compostella, because he had stayed behind like a good Samaritan to tend his dying companion.”
    With my French friends I went in search of a good meal, for we had fasted that day. Soon we discovered a small restaurant in one of the narrow streets, where we were given an excellent cassoulet, cantal cheese and a bottle of rough red wine. “We are entering the zone of Toulouse,” said I as I devoured my cassoulet. “I know that the Midi is divided into three culinary zones: Provence, where oil is used in cooking; Septimanie, where they use butter; and finally Le Toulousain, where goose fat is the basis. Soon we ought to be eating paté de foie gras.”
    “Wait till you get to Castelnaudary,” said the old Frenchman; “that is where truffles and goose-fat and proper cassoulet begin, aye, and the high-class wines of the Bordelais.”
    When the patriarchal French pilgrim had eaten his plentiful helping, drunk his demi-Bordeaux, picked his teeth and rolled his cigarette, he suggested we should have ‘une fine’ with our coffee. Being in a blissful mood of contentment, he began to expatiate on Carcassonne and the difference between ancient and modern warfare. I then found out that he was an expert in details of fortification. He dazzled my slow, siesta-loving brain with hourds, merlons, courtiers and tours à bec. I tried desperately to remember my Uncle Toby and to reply with scarps, counterscarps, ravelins, gazons, saps and horn works, but his flood of technicalities overwhelmed me. In a moment of aberration I muttered “Vauban” and “Namur”. The bearded pilgrim seized on the two magic words triumphantly. “Sapristi—Vauban—si je le connais! Vauban c’est ma passion! J’ai été artilleur en 1914. I know by heart every page written on Vauban: the method of approach by parallel-ricochet batteries, socket bayonets: he was the great forerunner. And Namur! What visions your mention of the name brings before my eyes—Namur cost the Germans ninety-seven thousand shells, which filled twenty-five trains: Liège took thirteen days to capture: Mau-beuge held up sixty thousand ‘Boches’, who were needed on the Marne. Le grand Napoléon once said of fortifications; they are necessary to gain time. Ça c’est la morale de la guerre!! That is why I am here, monsieur, a humble pilgrim of St. Louis and Philippe le Hardi here in Carcassonne, as well as a pilgrim of St. James the Moor-slayer.” Once mounted on his hobby-horse, there was no stopping the bearded pilgrim—ex-artilleryman. His son, who had been an aviator in the Second World War, was frankly bored by his father’s talk, and thought it the most ridiculous hobby-horse that ever gentleman mounted, but we both had to listen to a long harangue on the instruments of war used by Simon de Montfort for besieging Carcassonne; the big mangonneaux that cast stones, a hundred kilos in weight, two hundred metres; battering-rams or béliers, wooden rolling towers, not to mention mines and countermines. Mentally I prayed to Santa Barbara the patron saint of the artillery for a dispensation, but in vain. At last, mopping his forehead with a big red handkerchief and smoothing out his beard he said quietly: “Monsieur, vous m’avez fait grand plaisir: I see that you are well acquainted with the science of fortification and you appreciate its significance. As for my son, he is an aviator: he despises fortifications.”
    We set out together from Carcassonne towards Toulouse, but the young Frenchman hobbled along with such difficulty that I realized we should take weeks to get even to the Somport Pass. I asked the father why he allowed his son to tramp the roads: surely it would do serious damage to his wounded leg, but the son answered saying that he was resolved to carry out his vow and tramp the Road of St. James to the bitter end. I myself, too, began to suffer severe pains in my feet. At first I