The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho Read Free Book Online

know if the women were as pretty as
     the ones here in Spain. The heat of the day was almost unbearable, and in all of the bars
     and villages where we stopped, the people com- plained about the drought. Because of the
     heat, we adopted the Spanish custom of the siesta and rested between two and four in the
     afternoon when the sun was at its hottest.
    That afternoon, as we sat in an olive grove, the old man had come up to us and offered us
     a taste of wine. In spite of the heat, the habit of drinking wine had been part of life in
     that region for centuries.
    What do you mean, love was murdered there? I asked, since the old man seemed to want to
     strike up a conversation.
    Many centuries ago, a princess who was walking the Road to Santiago, Felicia of Aquitaine,
     decided, on her way back to Compostela, to give up everything and live here. She was love
     itself, because she divided all of her wealth among the poor people of the region and
     began to care for the sick.
    Petrus had lit one of his horrible rolled cigarettes, but despite his air of indifference,
     I could see that he was listening carefully to the old mans story.
    Her brother, Duke Guillermo, was sent by their father to bring her home. But Felicia
     refused to go. In desperation, the duke fatally stabbed her there in that small church
     that you can see in the distance; she had built it with her own hands in order to care for
     the poor and offer praise to God.
    When he came to his senses and realized what he had done, the duke went to Rome to ask the
     popes for- giveness. As penitence, the pope ordered him to walk to Compostela. Then a
     curious thing happened: on his way back, when he arrived here, he had the same impulse as
     his sister, and he stayed on, living in that little church that his sister had built,
     caring for the poor until the last days of his long life.
    Thats the law of retribution at work, Petrus laughed. The old man did not understand, but
     I knew what Petrus was saying. His concept of the law of retribution was
    similar to that of karma, or of the concept that as one sows, so shall they reap.
    As we had been walking, we had gotten involved in some long theological discussions about
     the relationship between God and humanity. I had argued that in the Tradition, there was
     always an involvement with God, but that it was a complex one. The path to God, for me,
     was quite different from the one we were following on the Road to Santiago, with its
     priests who were sorcerers, its gypsies who were devils, and its saints who performed
     miracles. All of these things seemed to me to be primi- tive, and too much connected with
     Christianity; they lacked the fascination, the elegance, and the ecstasy that the rituals
     of the Tradition evoked in me. Petrus on the other hand, argued that the guiding concept
     along the Road to Santiago was its simplicity. That the Road was one along which any
     person could walk, that its signifi- cance could be understood by even the least sophisti-
     cated person, and that, in fact, only such a road as that could lead to God. So Petrus
     thought my relationship to God was based too much on concept, on intellect, and on
     reasoning; I felt that his was too simplistic and intuitive.
    You believe that God exists, and so do I, Petrus had said at one point. So God exists for
     both of us. But if someone doesnt believe in him, that doesnt mean God ceases to exist.
     Nor does it mean that the nonbeliever is wrong.
    Does that mean that the existence of God depends on a persons desire and power?
    I had a friend once who was drunk all the time but who said three Hail Marys every night.
     His mother had conditioned him to do so ever since he was a child. Even when he came home
     helplessly drunk, and even though he did not believe in God, my friend always said his
     three Hail Marys. After he died, I was at a ritual of the Tradition, and I asked the
     spirit of the ancients where