Part 4
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People :
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Author : Albert Camus

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PART IV



Throughout September and October the town lay prostrate, at the mercy of the plague.



There was nothing to do but to "mark time," and some hundreds of thousands of men and
women went on doing this, through weeks that seemed interminable.



Mist, heat, and rain rang their changes in our streets. From the south came silent
coveys of starlings and thrushes, flying very high, but always giving the town a wide
berth, as though the strange implement of the plague described by Paneloux, the giant
flail whirling and shrilling over the housetops, warned them off us. At the beginning of
October torrents of rain swept the streets clean.



And all the time nothing more important befell us than that multitudinous marking
time.



It was now that Rieux and his friends came to realize how exhausted they were.



Indeed, the workers in the sanitary squads had given up trying to cope with their
fatigue. Rieux noticed the change coming over his associates, and himself as well, and it
took the form of a strange indifference to everything. Men, for instance, who hitherto had
shown a keen interest in every scrap of news concerning the plague now displayed none
at all. Rambert, who had been temporarily put in charge of a quarantine station, his hotel
had been taken over for this purpose, could state at any moment the exact number of
persons under his observation, and every detail of the procedure he had laid down for the
prompt evacuation of those who suddenly developed symptoms of the disease was firmly
fixed in his mind. The same was true of the statistics of the effects of anti-plague
inoculations on the persons in his quarantine station. Nevertheless, he could not have told
you the week's total of plague deaths, and he could not even have said if the figure was
rising or falling. And meanwhile, in spite of everything, he had not lost hope of being
able to "make his get-away" from one day to another.



As for the others, working themselves almost to a standstill throughout the day
and far into the night, they never bothered to read a newspaper or listen to the radio.



When told of some unlooked-for recovery, they made a show of interest, but actually
received the news with the stolid indifference that we may imagine the fighting man in a
great war to feel who, worn out by the incessant strain and mindful only of the duties
daily assigned to him, has ceased even to hope for the decisive battle or the bugle-call of
armistice.



Though he still worked out methodically the figures relating to the plague, Grand
would certainly have been quite unable to say to what they pointed. Unlike Rieux,
Rambert, and Tarrou, who obviously had great powers of endurance, he had never had
good health. And now, in addition to his duties in the Municipal Office, he had his night
work and his secretarial post under Rieux. One could see that the strain was telling on
him, and if he managed to keep going, it was thanks to two or three fixed ideas, one of
which was to take, the moment the plague ended, a complete vacation, of a week at least,
which he would devote, "hats off," to his work in progress. He was also becoming subject
to accesses of sentimentality and at such times would unburden himself to Rieux about
Jeanne.



Where was she now, he wondered; did her thoughts sometimes turn to him when
she read the papers? It was Grand to whom one day Rieux caught himself talking, much
to his own surprise, about his wife, and in the most commonplace terms, something he
had never done as yet to anyone.



Doubtful how far he could trust his wife's telegrams, their tone was always
reassuring, he had decided to wire the house physician of the sanatorium. The reply
informed him that her condition had worsened, but everything was being done to arrest
further progress of the disease. He had kept the news to himself so far and could only put
it down to his nervous exhaustion that he passed it on to Grand. After talking to the
doctor about Jeanne, Grand had asked some questions about Mme Rieux and, on hearing
Rieux's reply, said: "You know, it's wonderful, the cures they bring off nowadays." Rieux
agreed, merely adding that the long separation was beginning to tell on him, and, what
was more, he might have helped his wife to make a good recovery; whereas, as things
were, she must be feeling terribly lonely. After which he fell silent and gave only evasive
answers to Grand's further questions.



The others were in much the same state. Tarrou held his own better, but the
entries in his diary show that while his curiosity had kept its depth, it had lost its
diversity. Indeed, throughout this period the only person, apparently, who really
interested him was Cottard. In the evening, at Rieux's apartment, where he had come to
live now that the hotel was requisitioned as a quarantine center, he paid little or no
attention to Grand and the doctor when they read over the day's statistics. At the earliest
opportunity he switched the conversation over to his pet subject, small details of the daily
life at Oran.



More perhaps than any of them, Dr. Castel showed signs of wear and tear. On the
day when he came to tell Rieux that the anti-plague serum was ready, and they decided to
try it for the first time on M. Othon's small son, whose case seemed all but hopeless,
Rieux suddenly noticed, while he was announcing the latest statistics, that Castel was
slumped in his chair, sound asleep. The difference in his old friend's face shocked him.



The smile of benevolent irony that always played on it had seemed to endow it
with perpetual youth; now, abruptly left out of control, with a trickle of saliva between
the slightly parted lips, it betrayed its age and the wastage of the years. And, seeing this,
Rieux felt a lump come to his throat.



It was by such lapses that Rieux could gauge his exhaustion. His sensibility was
getting out of hand. Kept under all the time, it had grown hard and brittle and seemed to
snap completely now and then, leaving him the prey of his emotions.



No resource was left him but to tighten the stranglehold on his feelings and
harden his heart protectively. For he knew this was the only way of carrying on.



In any case, he had few illusions left, and fatigue was robbing him of even these
remaining few. He knew that, over a period whose end he could not glimpse, his task was
no longer to cure but to diagnose. To detect, to see, to describe, to register, and then
condemn, that was his present function. Sometimes a woman would clutch his sleeve,
crying shrilly: "Doctor, you'll save him, won't you?"



But he wasn't there for saving life; he was there to order a sick man's evacuation.



How futile was the hatred he saw on faces then! "You haven't a heart!" a woman told him
on one occasion. She was wrong; he had one. It saw him through his twenty-hour day,
when he hourly watched men dying who were meant to live. It enabled him to start anew
each morning. He had just enough heart for that, as things were now. How could that
heart have sufficed for saving life?



No, it wasn't medical aid that he dispensed in those crowded days, only
information. Obviously that could hardly be reckoned a man's job. Yet, when all was said
and done, who, in that terror-stricken, decimated populace, had scope for any activity
worthy of his manhood? Indeed, for Rieux his exhaustion was a blessing in disguise. Had
he been less tired, his senses more alert, that all-pervading odor of death might have
made him sentimental. But when a man has had only four hours' sleep, he isn't
sentimental. He sees things as they are; that is to say, he sees them in the garish light of
justice, hideous, witless justice. And those others, the men and women under sentence to
death, shared his bleak enlightenment. Before the plague he was welcomed as a savior.



He was going to make them right with a couple of pills or an injection, and people took
him by the arm on his way to the sickroom. Flattering, but dangerous. Now, on the
contrary, he came accompanied by soldiers, and they had to hammer on the door with
rifle-butts before the family would open it. They would have liked to drag him, drag the
whole human race, with them to the grave. Yes, it was quite true that men can't do
without their fellow men; that he was as helpless as these unhappy people and he, too,
deserved the same faint thrill of pity that he allowed himself once he had left them.



Such, anyhow, were the thoughts that in those endless-seeming weeks ran in the
doctor's mind, along with thoughts about his severance from his wife. And such, too,
were his friends' thoughts, judging by the look he saw on their faces. But the most
dangerous effect of the exhaustion steadily gaining on all engaged in the fight against the
epidemic did not consist in their relative indifference to outside events and the feelings of
others, but in the slackness and supine-ness that they allowed to invade their personal
lives. They developed a tendency to shirk every movement that didn't seem absolutely
necessary or called for efforts that seemed too great to be worth while. Thus these men
were led to break, oftener and oftener, the rules of hygiene they themselves had
instituted, to omit some of the numerous disinfections they should have practiced, and
sometimes to visit the homes of people suffering from pneumonic plague without taking
steps to safeguard themselves against infection, because they had been notified only at
the last moment and could not be bothered with returning to a sanitary service station,
sometimes a considerable distance away, to have the necessary instillations. There lay the
real danger; for the energy they devoted to righting the disease made them all the more
liable to it. In short, they were gambling on their luck, and luck is not to be coerced.



There was, however, one man in the town who seemed neither exhausted nor
discouraged; indeed, the living image of contentment. It was Cottard. Though
maintaining contact with Rieux and Rambert, he still kept rather aloof, whereas he
deliberately cultivated Tarrou, seeing him as often as Tarrou's scanty leisure permitted.



He had two reasons for this: one, that Tarrou knew all about his case, and the other, that
he always gave him a cordial welcome and made him feel at ease. That was one of the
remarkable things about Tarrou; no matter how much work he had put in, he was always
a ready listener and an agreeable companion. Even when, some evenings, he seemed
completely worn out, the next day brought him a new lease of energy. "Tarrou's a fellow
one can talk to," Cottard once told Rambert, "because he's really human. He always
understands."



This may explain why the entries in Tarrou's diary of this period tend to converge
on Cottard's personality. It is obvious that Tarrou was attempting to give a full-length
picture of the man and noted all his reactions and reflections, whether as conveyed to him
by Cottard or interpreted by himself. Under the heading "Cottard and his Relations with
the Plague," we find a series, of notes covering several pages and, in the narrator's
opinion, these are well worth summarizing here.



One of the entries gives Tarrou's general impression of Cottard at this time:



"He is blossoming out. Expanding in geniality and good humor." For Cottard was
anything but upset by the turn events were taking. Sometimes in Tarrou's company he
voiced his true feelings in remarks of this order: "Getting worse every day, isn't it? Well,
anyhow, everyone's in the same boat."



"Obviously," Tarrou comments, "he's in the same peril of death as everyone else,
but that's just the point; he's in it with the others. And then I'm pretty sure he doesn't
seriously think he runs much personal risk. He has got the idea into his head, apparently,
and perhaps it's not so farfetched as it seems, that a man suffering from a dangerous
ailment or grave anxiety is allergic to other ailments and anxieties. 'Have you noticed,' he
asked me, 'that no one ever runs two diseases at once? Let's suppose you have an
incurable disease like cancer or a galloping consumption, well, you'll never get plague or
typhus; it's a physical impossibility. In fact, one might go farther; have you ever heard of
a man with cancer being killed in an auto smash?' This theory, for what it's worth, keeps
Cottard cheerful. The thing he'd most detest is being cut off from others; he'd rather be
one of a beleaguered crowd than a prisoner alone. The plague has put an effective stop to
police inquiries, sleuthings, warrants of arrest, and so forth. Come to that, we have no
police nowadays; no crimes past or present, no more criminals, only condemned men
hoping for the most capricious of pardons; and among these are the police themselves."



Thus Cottard (if we may trust Tarrou's diagnosis) had good grounds for viewing
the symptoms of mental confusion and distress in those around him with an
understanding and an indulgent satisfaction that might have found expression in the
remark: "Prate away, my friends, but I had it first!"



"When I suggested to him," Tarrou continues, "that the surest way of not being
cut off from others was having a clean conscience, he frowned. 'If that is so, everyone's
always cut off from everyone else.' And a moment later he added: 'Say what you like,
Tarrou, but let me tell you this: the one way of making people hang together is to give
'em a spell of plague. You've only got to look around you.' Of course I see his point, and I
understand how congenial our present mode of life must be to him. How could he fail to
recognize at every turn reactions that were his; the efforts everyone makes to keep on the
right side of other people; the obligingness sometimes shown in helping someone who
has lost his way, and the ill humor shown at other times; the way people flock to the
luxury restaurants, their pleasure at being there and their reluctance to leave; the crowds
lining up daily at the picture-houses, filling theaters and music halls and even dance halls,
and flooding boisterously out into the squares and avenues; the shrinking from every
contact and, notwithstanding, the craving for human warmth that urges people to one
another, body to body, sex to sex?



Cottard has been through all that obviously, with one exception; we may rule out
women in his case. With that mug of his! And I should say that when tempted to visit a
brothel he refrains; it might give him a bad name and be held up against him one day.



"In short, this epidemic has done him proud. Of a lonely man who hated
loneliness it has made an accomplice. Yes, 'accomplice' is the word that fits, and doesn't
he relish his complicity! He is happily at one with all around him, with their superstitions,
their groundless panics, the susceptibilities of people whose nerves are always on the
stretch; with their fixed idea of talking the least possible about plague and nevertheless
talking of it all the time; with their abject terror at the slightest headache, now they know
headache to be an early symptom of the disease; and, lastly, with their frayed, irritable
sensibility that takes offense at trifling oversights and brings tears to their eyes over the
loss of a trouser-button."



Tarrou often went out with Cottard in the evening, and he describes how they
would plunge together into the dark crowds filling the streets at nightfall; how they
mingled, shoulder to shoulder, in the black-and-white moving mass lit here and there by
the fitful gleam of a street-lamp; and how they let themselves be swept along with the
human herd toward resorts of pleasure whose companionable warmth seemed a safeguard
from the plague's cold breath. What Cottard had some months previously been looking
for in public places, luxury and the lavish life, the frenzied orgies he had dreamed of
without being able to procure them, these were now the quest of a whole populace.



Though prices soared inevitably, never had so much money been squandered, and while
bare necessities were often lacking, never had so much been spent on superfluities. All
the recreations of leisure, due though it now was to unemployment, multiplied a
hundredfold. Sometimes Tarrou and Cottard would follow for some minutes one of those
amorous couples who in the past would have tried to hide the passion drawing them to
each other, but now, pressed closely to each other's side, paraded the streets among the
crowd, with the trancelike self-absorption of great lovers, oblivious of the people around
them.



Cottard watched them gloatingly. "Good work, my dears!" he'd exclaim. "Go to
it!" Even his voice had changed, grown louder; as Tarrou wrote, he was "blossoming out"



in the congenial atmosphere of mass excitement, fantastically large tips clinking on cafe
tables, love-affairs shaping under his eyes.



However, Tarrou seemed to detect little if any spiteful-ness in Cottard's attitude.



His "I've been through the mill myself" had more pity than triumph in it. "I suspect,"



Tarrou wrote, "that he's getting quite fond of these people shut up under their little patch
of sky within their city walls. For instance, he'd like to explain to them, if he had a
chance, that it isn't so terrible as all that. 'You hear them saying,' he told me, ' "After the
plague I'll do this or that."... They're eating their hearts out instead of staying put. And
they don't even realize their privileges. Take my case: could I say "After my arrest I'll do
this or that"? Arrest's a beginning, not an end. Whereas plague
Do you know what I think? They're fretting simply because they won't let
themselves go. And I know what I'm talking about.'"



"Yes, he knows what he's talking about," Tarrou added. "He has an insight into
the anomalies in the lives of the people here who, though they have an instinctive craving
for human contacts, can't bring themselves to yield to it, because of the mistrust that
keeps them apart. For it's common knowledge that you can't trust your neighbor; he may
pass the disease to you without your knowing it, and take advantage of a moment of
inadvertence on your part to infect you. When one has spent one's days, as Cottard has,
seeing a possible police spy in everyone, even in persons he feels drawn to, it's easy to
understand this reaction. One can have fellow-feelings toward people who are haunted by
the idea that when they least expect it plague may lay its cold hand on their shoulders,
and is, perhaps, about to do so at the very moment when one is congratulating oneself on
being safe and sound. So far as this is possible, he is at ease under a reign of terror. But I
suspect that, just because he has been through it before them, he can't wholly share with
them the agony of this feeling of uncertainty that never leaves them. It comes to this: like
all of us who have not yet died of plague he fully realizes that his freedom and his life
may be snatched from him at any moment. But since he, personally, has learned what it is
to live in a state of constant fear, he finds it normal that others should come to know this
state. Or perhaps it should be put like this: fear seems to him more bearable under these
conditions than it was when he had to bear its burden alone. In this respect he's wrong,
and this makes him harder to understand than other people. Still, after all, that's why he is
worth a greater effort to understand."



Tarrou's notes end with a story illustrating the curious state of mind arrived at no
less by Cottard than by other dwellers in the plague-stricken town. The story re-creates as
nearly as may be the curiously feverish atmosphere of this period, and that is why the
narrator attaches importance to it.



One evening Cottard and Tarrou went to the Municipal Opera House, where
Gluck's Orpheus was being given. Cottard had invited Tarrou. A touring operatic
company had come to Oran in the spring for a series of performances. Marooned there by
the outbreak of plague and finding themselves in difficulties, the company and the
management of the opera house had come to an agreement under which they were to give
one performance a week until further notice. Thus for several months our theater had
been resounding every Friday evening with the melodious laments of Orpheus and
Eurydice's vain appeals. None the less, the opera continued in high favor and played
regularly to full houses. From their seats, the most expensive, Cottard and Tarrou could
look down at the orchestra seats filled to capacity with the cream of Oran society. It was
interesting to see how careful they were, as they went to their places, to make an elegant
entrance. While the musicians were discreetly tuning up, men in evening dress could be
seen moving from one row to another, bowing gracefully to friends under the flood of
light bathing the proscenium. In the soft hum of well-mannered conversation they
regained the confidence denied them when they walked the dark streets of the town;
evening dress was a sure charm against plague.



Throughout the first act Orpheus lamented suavely his lost Eurydice, with women
in Grecian tunics singing melodious comments on his plight, and love was hymned in
alternating strophes. The audience showed their appreciation in discreet applause. Only a
few people noticed that in his song of the second act Orpheus introduced some tremolos
not in the score and voiced an almost exaggerated emotion when begging the lord of the
Underworld to be moved by his tears. Some rather jerky movements he indulged in gave
our connoisseurs of stagecraft an impression of clever, if slightly overdone, effects,
intended to bring out the emotion of the words he sang.



Not until the big duet between Orpheus and Eurydice in the third act, at the
precise moment when Eurydice was slipping from her lover, did a flutter of surprise run
through the house. And as though the singer had been waiting for this cue or, more likely,
because the faint sounds that came to him from the orchestra seats confirmed what he
was feeling, he chose this moment to stagger grotesquely to the footlights, his arms and
legs splayed out under his antique robe, and fall down in the middle of the property
sheepfold, always out of place, but now, in the eyes of the spectators, significantly,
appallingly so.



For at the same moment the orchestra stopped playing, the audience rose and
began to leave the auditorium, slowly and silently at first, like worshipers leaving
church when the service ends, or a death-chamber after a farewell visit to the dead,
women lifting their skirts and moving with bowed heads, men steering the ladies by the
elbow to prevent their brushing against the tip-up seats at the ends of the rows. But
gradually their movements quickened, whispers rose to exclamations, and finally the
crowd stampeded toward the exits, wedged together in the bottlenecks, and pouring out
into the street in a confused mass, with shrill cries of dismay.



Cottard and Tarrou, who had merely risen from their seats, gazed down at what
was a dramatic picture of their life in those days: plague on the stage in the guise of a
disarticulated mummer, and in the auditorium the toys of luxury, so futile now, forgotten
fans and lace shawls derelict on the red plush seats.



DURING the first part of September Rambert had worked conscientiously at Rieux's
side. He had merely asked for a few hours' leave on the day he was due to meet Gonzales
and the two youngsters again outside the boys' school. Gonzales kept the appointment, at
noon, and while he and the journalist were talking, they saw the two boys coming toward
them, laughing. They said they'd had no luck last time, but that was only to be expected.



Anyhow, it wasn't their turn for guard duty this week. Rambert must have patience till
next week; then they'd have another shot at it. Rambert observed that "patience" certainly
was needed in this business. Gonzales suggested they should all meet again on the
following Monday, and this time Rambert had better move in to stay with Marcel and
Louis.



"We'll make a date, you and I. If I don't turn up, go straight to their place.



I'll give you the address." But Marcel, or Louis, told him that the safest thing was
to take his pal there right away, then he'd be sure of finding it. If he wasn't too particular,
there was enough grub for the four of them. That way he'd get the hang of things.



Gonzales agreed it was a good idea, and the four of them set off toward the harbor.



Marcel and Louis lived on the outskirts of the dockyard, near the gate leading to
the cliff road. It was a small Spanish house with gaily painted shutters and bare, dark
rooms. The boys' mother, a wrinkled old Spanish woman with a smiling face, produced a
dish of which the chief ingredient was rice. Gonzales showed surprise, as rice had been
unprocurable for some time in the town. "We fix it up at the gate," Marcel explained.



Rambert ate and drank heartily, and Gonzales informed him he was "a damned good
sort." Actually the journalist was thinking solely of the coming week.



It turned out that he had a fortnight to wait, as the periods of guard duty were
extended to two weeks, to reduce the number of shifts. During that fortnight Rambert
worked indefatigably, giving every ounce of himself, with his eyes shut, as it were, from
dawn till night. He went to bed very late and always slept like a log. This abrupt
transition from a life of idleness to one of constant work had left him almost void of
thoughts or energy. He talked little about his impending escape. Only one incident is
worth noting: after a week he confessed to the doctor that for the first time he'd got really
drunk. It was the evening before; on leaving the bar he had an impression that his groin
was swollen and he had pains in his armpits when he moved his arms. "I'm in for it!" he
thought.



And his only reaction, an absurd one, as he frankly admitted to Rieux, had been to
start running to the upper town and when he reached a small square, from which if not the
sea, a fairly big patch of open sky could be seen, to call to his wife with a great cry, over
the walls of the town. On returning home and failing to discover any symptoms of plague
on his body, he had felt far from proud of having given way like that. Rieux, however,
said he could well understand one's being moved to act thus. "Or, anyhow, one may
easily feel inclined that way."



"Monsieur Othon was talking to me about you this morning," Rieux suddenly
remarked, when Rambert was bidding him good night. "He asked me if I knew you, and I
told him I did. Then he said: 'If he's a friend of yours advise him not to associate with
smugglers. It's bound to attract attention.' "



"Meaning what?"



"It means you'd better hurry up."



"Thanks." Rambert shook the doctor's hand.



In the doorway he suddenly swung round. Rieux noticed that, for the first time
since the outbreak of plague, he was smiling.



"Then why don't you stop my going? You could easily manage it."



Rieux shook his head with his usual deliberateness. It was none of his business, he
said. Rambert had elected for happiness, and he, Rieux, had no argument to put up
against him. Personally he felt incapable of deciding which was the right course and
which the wrong in such a case as Rambert's.



"If that's so, why tell me to hurry up?"



It was Rieux who now smiled.



"Perhaps because I, too, would like to do my bit for happiness."



Next day, though they were working together most of the time, neither referred to
the subject. On the following Sunday Rambert moved into the little Spanish house. He
was given a bed in the living-room. As the brothers did not come home for meals and
he'd been told to go out as little as possible, he was always alone but for occasional
meetings with the boys' mother. She was a dried-up little wisp of a woman, always
dressed in black, busy as a bee, and she had a nut-brown, wrinkled face and immaculately
white hair. No great-talker, she merely smiled genially when her eyes fell on Rambert.



On one of the few occasions when she spoke, it was to ask him if he wasn't afraid
of infecting his wife with plague. He replied that there might be some risk of that, but
only a very slight one; while if he stayed in the town, there was a fair chance of their
never seeing each other again.



The old woman smiled. "Is she nice?"



"Very nice."



"Pretty?"



"I think so."



"Ah," she nodded, "that explains it."



Rambert reflected. No doubt that explained it, but it was impossible that that
alone explained it.



The old woman went to Mass every morning. "Don't you believe in God?" she
asked him.



On Rambert's admitting he did not, she said again that "that explained it."



"Yes," she added, "you're right. You must go back to her. Or else what would be
left you?"



Rambert spent most of the day prowling round the room, gazing vaguely at the
distempered walls, idly fingering the fans that were their only decoration, or counting the
woolen balls on the tablecloth fringe. In the evening the youngsters came home; they
hadn't much to say, except that the time hadn't come yet. After dinner Marcel played the
guitar, and they drank an anise-flavored liqueur. Rambert seemed lost in thought.



On Wednesday Marcel announced: "It's for tomorrow night, at midnight. Be ready
on time." Of the two men sharing the sentry post with them, he explained, one had got
plague and the other, who had slept in the same room, was now under observation. Thus
for two or three days Marcel and Louis would be alone at the post. They'd fix up the final
details in the course of the night, and he could count on them to see it through. Rambert
thanked them.



"Pleased?" the old woman asked.



He said yes, but his thoughts were elsewhere.



The next day was very hot and muggy and a heat-mist veiled the sun. The total of
deaths had jumped up. But the old Spanish woman lost nothing of her serenity.



"There's so much wickedness in the world," she said. "So what can you expect?"



Like Marcel and Louis, Rambert was stripped to the waist. But, even so, sweat
was trickling down his chest and between his shoulder-blades. In the dim light of the
shuttered room their torsos glowed like highly polished mahogany. Rambert kept
prowling round like a caged animal, without speaking. Abruptly at four in the afternoon
he announced that he was going out.



"Don't forget," Marcel said. "At midnight sharp. Everything's set."



Rambert went to the doctor's apartment. Rieux's mother told him he would find
the doctor at the hospital in the upper town. As before, a crowd was circling in front of
the entrance gates. "Move on, there!" a police sergeant with bulging eyes bawled every
few minutes. And the crowd kept moving, but always in a circle. "No use hanging round
here." The sergeant's coat was soaked in sweat.



They knew it was "no use," but they stayed on, despite the devastating heat.



Rambert showed his pass to the sergeant, who told him to go to Tarrou's office.



Its door opened on the courtyard. He passed Father Paneloux, who was coming
out of the office.



Tarrou was sitting at a black wood desk, with his sleeves rolled up, mopping up
with his handkerchief a trickle of sweat in the bend of his arm. The office, a small, white-
painted room, smelt of drugs and damp cloth.



"Still here?" asked Tarrou.



"Yes. I'd like to have a word with Rieux."



"He's in the ward. Look here! Don't you think you could fix up whatever you've
come for without seeing him?"



"Why?"



"He's overdoing it. I spare him as much as I can."



Rambert gazed thoughtfully at Tarrou. He'd grown thinner, his eyes and features
were blurred with fatigue, his broad shoulders sagged. There was a knock at the door. A
male attendant, wearing a white mask, entered. He laid a little sheaf of cards on Tarrou's
desk and, his voice coming thickly through the cloth, said:



"Six," then went out. Tarrou looked at the journalist and showed him the cards,
spreading them fanwise.



"Neat little gadgets, aren't they? Well, they're deaths.



Last night's deaths." Frowning, he slipped the cards together. "The only thing
that's left us is accountancy!"



Taking his purchase on the table, Tarrou rose to his feet.



"You're off quite soon, I take it?"



"Tonight, at midnight."



Tarrou said he was glad to hear it, and Rambert had better look after himself for a
bit.



"Did you say that, sincerely?"



Tarrou shrugged his shoulders.



"At my age one's got to be sincere. Lying's too much effort."



"Excuse me, Tarrou," the journalist said, "but I'd greatly like to see the doctor."



"I know. He's more human than I. All right, come along."



"It's not that." Rambert stumbled over his words and broke off.



Tarrou stared at him; then, unexpectedly, his face broke into a smile.



They walked down a narrow passage; the walls were painted pale green, and the
light was glaucous, like that in an aquarium. Before they reached the glazed double door
at the end of the passage, behind which shadowy forms could be seen moving, Tarrou
took Rambert into a small room, all the wall space of which was occupied by cupboards.



Opening one of these, he took from a sterilizer two masks of cotton-wool enclosed in
muslin, handed one to Rambert, and told him to put it on.



The journalist asked if it was really any use. Tarrou said no, but it inspired
confidence in others.



They opened the glazed door. It led into a very large room, all the windows of
which were shut, in spite of the great heat. Electric fans buzzed near the ceiling, churning
up the stagnant, overheated air above two long rows of gray beds. Groans shrill or stifled
rose on all sides, blending in a monotonous dirgelike refrain. Men in white moved slowly
from bed to bed under the garish light flooding in from high, barred windows. The
appalling heat in the ward made Rambert ill at ease, and he had difficulty in recognizing
Rieux, who was bending over a groaning form. The doctor was lancing the patient's
groin, while two nurses, one on each side, held his legs apart. Presently Rieux
straightened up, dropped his instruments into a tray that an attendant held out to him, and
remained without moving for some moments, gazing down at the man, whose wound was
now being dressed.



"Any news?" he asked Tarrou, who had come beside him.



"Paneloux is prepared to replace Rambert at the quarantine station. He has put in a
lot of useful work already. All that remains is to reorganize group number three, now that
Rambert's going."



Rieux nodded.



"Castel has his first lot of serum ready now," Tarrou continued. "He's in favor of
its being tried at once."



"Good," Rieux said. "That's good news."



"And Rambert's come."



Rieux looked round. His eyes narrowed above the mask when he saw the
journalist.



"Why have you come?" he asked. "Surely you should be elsewhere?"



Tarrou explained that it was fixed for midnight, to which Rambert added: "That's
the idea, anyhow."



Whenever any of them spoke through the mask, the muslin bulged and grew moist
over the lips. This gave a sort of unreality to the conversation; it was like a colloquy of
statues.



"I'd like to have a word with you," Rambert said.



"Right. I'm just going. Wait for me in Tarrou's office."



A minute or so later Rambert and Rieux were sitting at the back of the doctor's
car. Tarrou, who was at the wheel, looked round as he let in the gear.



"Gas is running out," he said. "We'll have to foot-slog it tomorrow."



"Doctor," Rambert said, "I'm not going. I want to stay with you."



Tarrou made no movement; he went on driving. Rieux seemed unable to shake off
his fatigue.



"And what about her?" His voice was hardly audible.



Rambert said he'd thought it over very carefully, and his views hadn't changed,
but if he went away, he would feel ashamed of himself, and that would embarrass his
relations with the woman he loved.



Showing more animation, Rieux told him that was sheer nonsense; there was
nothing shameful in preferring happiness.



"Certainly," Rambert replied. "But it may be shameful to be happy by oneself."



Tarrou, who had not spoken so far, now remarked, without turning his head, that
if Rambert wished to take a share in other people's unhappiness, he'd have no time left for
happiness. So the choice had to be made.



"That's not it," Rambert rejoined. "Until now I always felt a stranger in this town,
and that I'd no concern with you people. But now that I've seen what I have seen, I know
that I belong here whether I want it or not. This business is everybody's business." When
there was no reply from either of the others, Rambert seemed to grow annoyed. "But you
know that as well as I do, damn it! Or else what are you up to in that hospital of yours?



Have you made a definite choice and turned down happiness?"



Rieux and Tarrou still said nothing, and the silence lasted until they were at the
doctor's home. Then Rambert repeated his last question in a yet more emphatic tone.



Only then Rieux turned toward him, raising himself with an effort from the
cushion.



"Forgive me, Rambert, only, well, I simply don't know. But stay with us if you
want to." A swerve of the car made him break off. Then, looking straight in front of him,
he said: "For nothing in the world is it worth turning one's back on what one loves. Yet
that is what I'm doing, though why I do not know."



He sank back on the cushion. "That's how it is," he added wearily, "and there's
nothing to be done about it. So let's recognize the fact and draw the conclusions."



"What conclusions?"



"Ah," Rieux said, "a man can't cure and know at the same time. So let's cure as
quickly as we can. That's the more urgent job."



At midnight Tarrou and Rieux were giving Rambert the map of the district he was
to keep under surveillance. Tarrou glanced at his watch. Looking up, he met Rambert's
gaze.



"Have you let them know?" he asked.



The journalist looked away.



"I'd sent them a note", he spoke with an effort, "before coming to see you."



Toward the close of October Castel's anti-plague serum was tried for the first
time. Practically speaking, it was Rieux's last card. If it failed, the doctor was convinced
the whole town would be at the mercy of the epidemic, which would either continue its
ravages for an unpredictable period or perhaps die out abruptly of its own accord.



The day before Castel called on Rieux, M. Othon's son had fallen ill and all the
family had to go into quarantine. Thus the mother, who had only recently come out of it,
found herself isolated once again. In deference to the official regulations the magistrate
had promptly sent for Dr. Rieux the moment he saw symptoms of the disease in his little
boy. Mother and father were standing at the bedside when Rieux entered the room. The
boy was in the phase of extreme prostration and submitted without a whimper to the
doctor's examination. When Rieux raised his eyes he saw the magistrate's gaze intent on
him, and, behind, the mother's pale face. She was holding a handkerchief to her mouth,
and her big, dilated eyes followed each of the doctor's movements.



"He has it, I suppose?" the magistrate asked in a toneless voice.



"Yes." Rieux gazed down at the child again.



The mother's eyes widened yet more, but she still said nothing. M. Othon, too,
kept silent for a while before saying in an even lower tone:



"Well, doctor, we must do as we are told to do."



Rieux avoided looking at Mme Othon, who was still holding her handkerchief to
her mouth.



"It needn't take long," he said rather awkwardly, "if you'll let me use your phone."



The magistrate said he would take him to the telephone. But before going, the
doctor turned toward Mme Othon.



"I regret very much indeed, but I'm afraid you'll have to get your things ready.



You know how it is."



Mme Othon seemed disconcerted. She was staring at the floor.



Then, "I understand," she murmured, slowly nodding her head. "I'll set about it at
once."



Before leaving, Rieux on a sudden impulse asked the Othons if there wasn't
anything they'd like him to do for them. The mother gazed at him in silence. And now the
magistrate averted his eyes.



"No," he said, then swallowed hard. "But, save my son."



In the early days a mere formality, quarantine had now been reorganized by Rieux
and Rambert on very strict lines.



In particular they insisted on having members of the family of a patient kept apart.



If, unawares, one of them had been infected, the risks of an extension of the infection
must not be multiplied. Rieux explained this to the magistrate, who signified his approval
of the procedure. Nevertheless, he and his wife exchanged a glance that made it clear to
Rieux how keenly they both felt the separation thus imposed on them. Mme Othon and
her little girl could be given rooms in the quarantine hospital under Rambert's charge. For
the magistrate, however, no accommodation was available except in an isolation camp
the authorities were now installing in the municipal stadium, using tents supplied by the
highway department. When Rieux apologized for the poor accommodation, M.



Othon replied that there was one rule for all alike, and it was only proper to abide
by it.



The boy was taken to the auxiliary hospital and put in a ward of ten beds which
had formerly been a classroom. After some twenty hours Rieux became convinced that
the case was hopeless. The infection was steadily spreading, and the boy's body putting
up no resistance. Tiny, half-formed, but acutely painful buboes were clogging the joints
of the child's puny limbs. Obviously it was a losing fight.



Under the circumstances Rieux had no qualms about testing Castel's serum on the
boy. That night, after dinner, they performed the inoculation, a lengthy process, without
getting the slightest reaction. At daybreak on the following day they gathered round the
bed to observe the effects of this test inoculation on which so much hung.



The child had come out of his extreme prostration and was tossing about
convulsively on the bed. From four in the morning Dr. Castel and Tarrou had been
keeping watch and noting, stage by stage, the progress and remissions of the malady.



Tarrou's bulky form was slightly drooping at the head of the bed, while at its foot, with
Rieux standing beside him, Castel was seated, reading, with every appearance of calm, an
old leather-bound book. One by one, as the light increased in the former classroom, the
others arrived. Paneloux, the first to come, leaned against the wall on the opposite side of
the bed to Tarrou. His face was drawn with grief, and the accumulated weariness of many
weeks, during which he had never spared himself, had deeply seamed his somewhat
prominent forehead. Grand came next. It was seven o'clock, and he apologized for being
out of breath; he could only stay a moment, but wanted to know if any definite results had
been observed. Without speaking, Rieux pointed to the child. His eyes shut, his teeth
clenched, his features frozen in an agonized grimace, he was rolling his head from side to
side on the bolster. When there was just light enough to make out the half-obliterated
figures of an equation chalked on a blackboard that still hung on the wall at the far end of
the room, Rambert entered. Posting himself at the foot of the next bed, he took a package
of cigarettes from his pocket. But after his first glance at the child's face he put it back.



From his chair Castel looked at Rieux over his spectacles.



"Any news of his father?"



"No," said Rieux. "He's in the isolation camp."



The doctor's hands were gripping the rail of the bed, his eyes fixed on the small
tortured body. Suddenly it stiffened, and seemed to give a little at the waist, as slowly the
arms and legs spread out X-wise. From the body, naked under an army blanket, rose a
smell of damp wool and stale sweat. The boy had gritted his teeth again. Then very
gradually he relaxed, bringing his arms and legs back toward the center of the bed, still
without speaking or opening his eyes, and his breathing seemed to quicken. Rieux looked
at Tarrou, who hastily lowered his eyes.



They had already seen children die, for many months now death had shown no
favoritism, but they had never yet watched a child's agony minute by minute, as they had
now been doing since daybreak. Needless to say, the pain inflicted on these innocent
victims had always seemed to them to be what in fact it was: an abominable thing. But
hitherto they had felt its abomination in, so to speak, an abstract way; they had never had
to witness over so long a period the death-throes of an innocent child.



And just then the boy had a sudden spasm, as if something had bitten him in the
stomach, and uttered a long, shrill wail. For moments that seemed endless he stayed in a
queer, contorted position, his body racked by convulsive tremors; it was as if his frail
frame were bending before the fierce breath of the plague, breaking under the reiterated
gusts of fever. Then the storm-wind passed, there came a lull, and he relaxed a little; the
fever seemed to recede, leaving him gasping for breath on a dank, pestilential shore, lost
in a languor that already looked like death. When for the third time the fiery wave broke
on him, lifting him a little, the child curled himself up and shrank away to the edge of the
bed, as if in terror of the flames advancing on him, licking his limbs. A moment later,
after tossing his head wildly to and fro, he flung off the blanket. From between the
inflamed eyelids big tears welled up and trickled down the sunken, leaden-hued cheeks.



When the spasm had passed, utterly exhausted, tensing his thin legs and arms, on which,
within forty-eight hours, the flesh had wasted to the bone, the child lay flat, racked on the
tumbled bed, in a grotesque parody of crucifixion.



Bending, Tarrou gently stroked with his big paw the small face stained with tears
and sweat. Castel had closed his book a few moments before, and his eyes were now
fixed on the child. He began to speak, but had to give a cough before continuing, because
his voice rang out so harshly.



"There wasn't any remission this morning, was there, Rieux?"



Rieux shook his head, adding, however, that the child was putting up more
resistance than one would have expected. Paneloux, who was slumped against the wall,
said in a low voice:



"So if he is to die, he will have suffered longer." Light was increasing in the ward.



The occupants of the other nine beds were tossing about and groaning, but in tones that
seemed deliberately subdued. Only one, at the far end of the ward, was screaming, or
rather uttering little exclamations at regular intervals, which seemed to convey surprise
more than pain. Indeed, one had the impression that even for the sufferers the frantic
terror of the early phase had passed, and there was a sort of mournful resignation in their
present attitude toward the disease. Only the child went on fighting with all his little
might. Now and then Rieux took his pulse, less because this served any purpose than as
an escape from his utter helplessness, and when he closed his eyes, he seemed to feel its
tumult mingling with the fever of his own blood. And then, at one with the tortured child,
he struggled to sustain him with all the remaining strength of his own body. But, linked
for a few moments, the rhythms of their heartbeats soon fell apart, the child escaped him,
and again he knew his impotence. Then he released the small, thin wrist and moved back
to his place. The light on the whitewashed walls was changing from pink to yellow. The
first waves of another day of heat were beating on the windows. They hardly heard Grand
saying he would come back as he turned to go. All were waiting. The child, his eyes still
closed, seemed to grow a little calmer. His clawlike fingers were feebly plucking at the
sides of the bed. Then they rose, scratched at the blanket over his knees, and suddenly he
doubled up his limbs, bringing his thighs above his stomach, and remained quite still. For
the first time he opened his eyes and gazed at Rieux, who was standing immediately in
front of him. In the small face, rigid as a mask of grayish clay, slowly the lips parted and
from them rose a long, incessant scream, hardly varying with his respiration, and filling
the ward with a fierce, indignant protest, so little childish that it seemed like a collective
voice issuing from all the sufferers there. Rieux clenched his jaws, Tarrou looked away.



Rambert went and stood beside Castel, who closed the book lying on his knees. Paneloux
gazed down at the small mouth, fouled with the sores of the plague and pouring out the
angry death-cry that has sounded through the ages of mankind. He sank on his knees, and
all present found it natural to hear him say in a voice hoarse but clearly audible across
that nameless, never ending wail:



"My God, spare this child!"



But the wail continued without cease and the other sufferers began to grow
restless. The patient at the far end of the ward, whose little broken cries had gone on
without a break, now quickened their tempo so that they flowed together in one unbroken
cry, while the others' groans grew louder. A gust of sobs swept through the room,
drowning Paneloux's prayer, and Rieux, who was still tightly gripping the rail of the bed,
shut his eyes, dazed with exhaustion and disgust.



When he opened them again, Tarrou was at his side.



"I must go," Rieux said. "I can't bear to hear them any longer."



But then, suddenly, the other sufferers fell silent. And now the doctor grew aware
that the child's wail, after weakening more and more, had fluttered out into silence.



Around him the groans began again, but more faintly, like a far echo of the fight that now
was over. For it was over. Castel had moved round to the other side of the bed and said
the end had come. His mouth still gaping, but silent now, the child was lying among the
tumbled blankets, a small, shrunken form, with the tears still wet on his cheeks.



Paneloux went up to the bed and made the sign of benediction. Then gathering up
his cassock, he walked out by the passage between the beds.



"Will you have to start it all over again?" Tarrou asked Castel.



The old doctor nodded slowly, with a twisted smile.



"Perhaps. After all, he put up a surprisingly long resistance."



Rieux was already on his way out, walking so quickly and with such a strange
look on his face that Paneloux put out an arm to check him when he was about to pass
him in the doorway.



"Come, doctor," he began.



Rieux swung round on him fiercely.



"Ah! That child, anyhow, was innocent, and you know it as well as I do!"



He strode on, brushing past Paneloux, and walked across the school playground.



Sitting on a wooden bench under the dingy, stunted trees, he wiped off the sweat
that was beginning to run into his eyes. He felt like shouting imprecations, anything to
loosen the stranglehold lashing his heart with steel. Heat was flooding down between the
branches of the fig trees. A white haze, spreading rapidly over the blue of the morning
sky, made the air yet more stifling. Rieux lay back wearily on the bench. Gazing up at the
ragged branches, the shimmering sky, he slowly got back his breath and fought down his
fatigue.



He heard a voice behind him. "Why was there that anger in your voice just now?



What we'd been seeing was as unbearable to me as it was to you."



Rieux turned toward Paneloux.



"I know. I'm sorry. But weariness is a kind of madness. And there are times when
the only feeling I have is one of mad revolt."



"I understand," Paneloux said in a low voice. "That sort of thing is revolting
because it passes our human understanding. But perhaps we should love what we cannot
understand."



Rieux straightened up slowly. He gazed at Paneloux, summoning to his gaze all
the strength and fervor he could muster against his weariness. Then he shook his head.



"No, Father. I've a very different idea of love. And until my dying day I shall
refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture."



A shade of disquietude crossed the priest's face. "Ah, doctor," he said sadly, "I've
just realized what is meant by 'grace.'"



Rieux had sunk back again on the bench. His lassitude had returned and from its
depths he spoke, more gently:



"It's something I haven't got; that I know. But I'd rather not discuss that with you.



We're working side by side for something that unites us, beyond blasphemy and prayers.



And it's the only thing that matters."



Paneloux sat down beside Rieux. It was obvious that he was deeply moved.



"Yes, yes," he said, "you, too, are working for man's salvation."



Rieux tried to smile.



"Salvation's much too big a word for me. I don't aim so high. I'm concerned with
man's health; and for me his health comes first."



Paneloux seemed to hesitate. "Doctor?" he began, then fell silent. Down his face,
too, sweat was trickling. Murmuring: "Good-by for the present," he rose.



His eyes were moist. When he turned to go, Rieux, who had seemed lost in
thought, suddenly rose and took a step toward him.



"Again, please forgive me. I can promise there won't be another outburst of that
kind."



Paneloux held out his hand, saying regretfully:



"And yet, I haven't convinced you!"



"What does it matter? What I hate is death and disease, as you well know. And
whether you wish it or not, we're allies, facing them and fighting them together." Rieux
was still holding Paneloux's hand. "So you see", but he refrained from meeting the
priest's eyes, "God Himself can't part us now."



Since joining Rieux's band of workers Paneloux had spent his entire time in
hospitals and places where he came in contact with plague. He had elected for the place
among his fellow workers that he judged incumbent on him, in the forefront of the fight.



And constantly since then he had rubbed shoulders with death. Though theoretically
immunized by periodical inoculations, he was well aware that at any moment death might
claim him too, and he had given thought to this. Outwardly he had lost nothing of his
serenity. But from the day on which he saw a child die, something seemed to change in
him. And his face bore traces of the rising tension of his thoughts. When one day he told
Rieux with a smile that he was working on a short essay entitled "Is a Priest Justified in
Consulting a Doctor?" Rieux had gathered that something graver lay behind the question
than the priest's tone seemed to imply. On the doctor's saying he would greatly like to
have a look at the essay, Paneloux informed him that he would shortly be preaching at a
Mass for men, and his sermon would convey some at least of his considered opinions on
the question.



"I hope you'll come, doctor. The subject will interest you.".



A high wind was blowing on the day Father Paneloux preached his second
sermon.



The congregation, it must be admitted, was sparser than on the first occasion,
partly because this kind of performance had lost its novelty for our townsfolk.



Indeed, considering the abnormal conditions they were up against, the very word
"novelty" had lost all meaning. Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether
abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly
immoral way of living, had replaced normal religious practice by more or less
extravagant superstitions. Thus they were readier to wear prophylactic medals of St. Roch
than to go to Mass.



An illustration may be found in the remarkable interest shown in prophecies of all
descriptions. True, in the spring, when the epidemic was expected to end abruptly at any
moment, no one troubled to take another's opinion as to its probable duration, since
everyone had persuaded himself that it would have none.



But as the days went by, a fear grew up that the calamity might last indefinitely,
and then the ending of the plague became the target of all hopes.



As a result copies of predictions attributed to soothsayers or saints of the Catholic
Church circulated freely from hand to hand. The local printing firms were quick to realize
the profit to be made by pandering to this new craze and printed large numbers of the
prophecies that had been going round in manuscript.



Finding that the public appetite for this type of literature was still unsated, they
had researches made in the municipal libraries for all the mental pabulum of the kind
available in old chronicles, memoirs, and the like. And when this source ran dry, they
commissioned journalists to write up forecasts, and, in this respect at least, the journalists
proved themselves equal to their prototypes of earlier ages.



Some of these prophetic writings were actually serialized in our newspapers and
read with as much avidity as the love-stories that had occupied these columns in the
piping times of health. Some predictions were based on far-fetched arithmetical
calculations, involving the figures of the year, the total of deaths, and the number of
months the plague had so far lasted. Others made comparisons with the great pestilences
of former times, drew parallels (which the forecasters called "constants"), and claimed to
deduce conclusions bearing on the present calamity. But our most popular prophets were
undoubtedly those who in an apocalyptic jargon had announced sequences of events, any
one of which might be construed as applicable to the present state of affairs and was
abstruse enough to admit of almost any interpretation. Thus Nostradamus and St. Odilia
were consulted daily, and always with happy results.



Indeed, the one thing these prophecies had in common was that, ultimately, all
were reassuring. Unfortunately, though, the plague was not.



Thus superstition had usurped the place of religion in the life of our town, and that
is why the church in which Paneloux preached his sermon was only three-quarters full.



That evening, when Rieux arrived, the wind was pouring in great gusts through the
swing-doors and filling the aisles with sudden drafts. And it was in a cold, silent church,
surrounded by a congregation of men exclusively, that Rieux watched the Father climb
into the pulpit. He spoke in a gender, more thoughtful tone than on the previous occasion,
and several times was noticed to be stumbling over his words. A yet more noteworthy
change was that instead of saying "you" he now said "we."



However, his voice grew gradually firmer as he proceeded. He started by recalling
that for many a long month plague had been in our midst, and we now knew it better,
after having seen it often seated at our tables or at the bedsides of those we loved. We had
seen it walking at our side, or waiting for our coming at the places where we worked.



Thus we were now, perhaps, better able to comprehend what it was telling us
unceasingly; a message to which, in the first shock of the visitation, we might not have
listened with due heed. What he, Father Paneloux, had said in his first sermon still held
good, such, anyhow, was his belief. And yet, perhaps, as may befall any one of us (here
he struck his breast), his words and thoughts had lacked in charity. However this might
be, one thing was not to be gainsaid; a fact that always, under all circumstances, we
should bear in mind.



Appearances notwithstanding, all trials, however cruel, worked together for good
to the Christian. And, indeed, what a Christian should always seek in his hour of trial was
to discern that good, in what it consisted and how best he could turn it to account.



At this stage the people near Rieux seemed to settle in against the arm-rests of
their pews and make themselves as comfortable as they could. One of the big padded
entrance doors was softly thudding in the wind, and someone got up to secure it. As a
result, Rieux's attention wandered and he did not follow well what Paneloux now went on
to say. Apparently it came to this: we might try to explain the phenomenon of the plague,
but, above all, should learn what it had to teach us. Rieux gathered that, to the Father's
thinking, there was really nothing to explain.



His interest quickened when, in a more emphatic tone, the preacher said that there
were some things we could grasp as touching God, and others we could not.



There was no doubt as to the existence of good and evil and, as a rule, it was easy
to see the difference between them. The difficulty began when we looked into the nature
of evil, and among things evil he included human suffering. Thus we had apparently
needful pain, and apparently needless pain; we had Don Juan cast into hell, and a child's
death. For while it is right that a libertine should be struck down, we see no reason for a
child's suffering. And, truth to tell, nothing was more important on earth than a child's
suffering, the horror it inspires in us, and the reasons we must find to account for it. In
other manifestations of life God made things easy for us and, thus far, our religion had no
merit. But in this respect He put us, so to speak, with our backs to the wall. Indeed, we all
were up against the wall that plague had built around us, and in its lethal shadow we must
work out our salvation. He, Father Paneloux, refused to have recourse to simple devices
enabling him to scale that wall. Thus he might easily have assured them that the child's
sufferings would be compensated for by an eternity of bliss awaiting him. But how could
he give that assurance when, to tell the truth, he knew nothing about it? For who would
dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human
suffering? He who asserted that would not be a true Christian, a follower of the Master
who knew all the pangs of suffering in his body and his soul. No, he, Father Paneloux,
would keep faith with that great symbol of all suffering, the tortured body on the Cross;
he would stand fast, his back to the wall, and face honestly the terrible problem of a
child's agony. And he would boldly say to those who listened to his words today: "My
brothers, a time of testing has come for us all. We must believe everything or deny
everything. And who among you, I ask, would dare to deny everything?"



It crossed Rieux's mind that Father Paneloux was dallying with heresy in speaking
thus, but he had no time to follow up the thought. The preacher was declaring vehemently
that this uncompromising duty laid on the Christian was at once his ruling virtue and his
privilege. He was well aware that certain minds, schooled to a more indulgent and
conventional morality, might well be dismayed, not to say outraged, by the seemingly
excessive standard of Christian virtue about which he was going to speak. But religion in
a time of plague could not be the religion of every day. While God might accept and even
desire that the soul should take its ease and rejoice in happier times, in periods of extreme
calamity He laid extreme demands on it. Thus today God had vouchsafed to His creatures
an ordeal such that they must acquire and practice the greatest of all virtues: that of the
All or Nothing.



Many centuries previously a profane writer had claimed to reveal a secret of the
Church by declaring that purgatory did not exist. He wished to convey that there could be
no half measures, there was only the alternative between heaven and hell; you were either
saved or damned. That, according to Paneloux, was a heresy that could spring only from
a blind, disordered soul. Nevertheless, there may well have been periods of history when
purgatory could not be hoped for; periods when it was impossible to speak of venial sin.



Every sin was deadly, and any indifference criminal. It was all or it was nothing.



The preacher paused, and Rieux heard more clearly the whistling of the wind
outside; judging by the sounds that came in below the closed doors, it had risen to storm
pitch. Then he heard Father Paneloux's voice again. He was saying that the total
acceptance of which he had been speaking was not to be taken in the limited sense
usually given to the words; he was not thinking of mere resignation or even of that harder
virtue, humility. It involved humiliation, but a humiliation to which the person humiliated
gave full assent. True, the agony of a child was humiliating to the heart and to the mind.



But that was why we had to come to terms with it. And that, too, was why, and here
Paneloux assured those present that it was not easy to say what he was about to say, since
it was God's will, we, too, should will it. Thus and thus only the Christian could face the
problem squarely and, scorning subterfuge, pierce to the heart of the supreme issue, the
essential choice. And his choice would be to believe everything, so as not to be forced
into denying everything. Like those worthy women who, after learning that buboes were
the natural issues through which the body cast out infection, went to their church and
prayed: "Please, God, give him buboes," thus the Christian should yield himself wholly to
the divine will, even though it passed his understanding. It was wrong to say: "This I
understand, but that I cannot accept"; we must go straight to the heart of that which is
unacceptable, precisely because it is thus that we are constrained to make our choice. The
sufferings of children were our bread of affliction, but without this bread our souls would
die of spiritual hunger.



The shuffling sounds which usually followed the moment when the preacher
paused were beginning to make themselves heard when, unexpectedly, he raised his
voice, making as if to put himself in his hearers' place and ask what then was the proper
course to follow. He made no doubt that the ugly word "fatalism" would be applied to
what he said. Well, he would not boggle at the word, provided he were allowed to qualify
it with the adjective "active." Needless to say, there was no question of imitating the
Abyssinian Christians of whom he had spoken previously. Nor should one even think of
acting like those Persians who in time of plague threw their infected garments on the
Christian sanitary workers and loudly called on Heaven to give the plague to these
infidels who were trying to avert a pestilence sent by God. But, on the other hand, it
would be no less wrong to imitate the monks at Cairo who, when plague was raging in
the town, distributed the Host with pincers at the Mass, so as to avoid contact with wet,
warm mouths in which infection might be latent. The plague-stricken Persians and the
monks were equally at fault. For the former a child's agony did not count; with the latter,
on the contrary, the natural dread of suffering ranked highest in their conduct. In both
cases the real problem had been shirked; they had closed their ears to God's voice.



But, Paneloux continued, there were other precedents of which he would now
remind them. If the chronicles of the Black Death at Marseille were to be trusted, only
four of the eighty-one monks in the Mercy Monastery survived the epidemic. And of
these four three took to flight. Thus far the chronicler, and it was not his task to tell us
more than the bare facts. But when he read that chronicle, Father Paneloux had found his
thoughts fixed on that monk who stayed on by himself, despite the death of his seventy-
seven companions, and, above all, despite the example of his three brothers who had fled.



And, bringing down his fist on the edge of the pulpit, Father Paneloux cried in a ringing
voice:



"My brothers, each one of us must be the one who stays!" There was no question
of not taking precautions or failing to comply with the orders wisely promulgated for the
public weal in the disorders of a pestilence. Nor should we listen to certain moralists who
told us to sink on our knees and give up the struggle. No, we should go forward, groping
our way through the darkness, stumbling perhaps at times, and try to do what good lay in
our power. As for the rest, we must hold fast, trusting in the divine goodness, even as to
the deaths of little children, and not seeking personal respite.



At this point Father Paneloux evoked the august figure of Bishop Belzunce during
the Marseille plague. He reminded his hearers how, toward the close of the epidemic, the
Bishop, having done all that it behooved him, shut himself up in his palace, behind high
walls, after laying in a stock of food and drink. With a sudden revulsion of feeling, such
as often comes in times of extreme tribulation, the inhabitants of Marseille, who had
idolized him hitherto, now turned against him, piled up corpses round his house in order
to infect it, and even flung bodies over the walls to make sure of his death. Thus in a
moment of weakness the Bishop had proposed to isolate himself from the outside world,
and, lo and behold, corpses rained down on his head! This had a lesson for us all; we
must convince ourselves that there is no island of escape in time of plague. No, there was
no middle course. We must accept the dilemma and choose either to hate God or to love
God. And who would dare to choose to hate Him?



"My brothers", the preacher's tone showed he was nearing the conclusion of his
sermon, "the love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our
human personality. And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of
children, it alone can justify them, since we cannot understand them, and we can only
make God's will ours. That is the hard lesson I would share with you today. That is the
faith, cruel in men's eyes, and crucial in God's, which we must ever strive to compass.



We must aspire beyond ourselves toward that high and fearful vision. And on that lofty
plane all will fall into place, all discords be resolved, and truth flash forth from the dark
cloud of seeming injustice. Thus in some churches of the south of France plague victims
have lain sleeping many a century under the flagstones of the chancel, and priests now
speak above their tombs, and the divine message they bring to men rises from that
charnel, to which, nevertheless, children have contributed their share."



When Rieux was preparing to leave the church a violent gust swept up the nave
through the half-open doors and buffeted the faces of the departing congregation. It
brought with it a smell of rain, a tang of drenched sidewalks, warning them of the
weather they would encounter outside. An old priest and a young deacon who were
walking immediately in front of Rieux had much difficulty in keeping their headdress
from blowing away. But this did not prevent the elder of the two from discussing the
sermon they had heard. He paid tribute to the preacher's eloquence, but the boldness of
thought Paneloux had shown gave him pause. In his opinion the sermon had displayed
more uneasiness than real power, and at Paneloux's age a priest had no business to feel
uneasy. The young deacon, his head bowed to protect his face from the wind, replied that
he saw much of the Father, had followed the evolution of his views, and believed his
forthcoming pamphlet would be bolder still; indeed it might well be refused the
imprimatur.



"You don't mean to say so! What's the main idea?" asked the old priest.



They were now in the Cathedral square and for some moments the roar of the
wind made it impossible for the younger man to speak. When there was a slight lull, he
said briefly to his companion:



"That it's illogical for a priest to call in a doctor."



Tarrou, when told by Rieux what Paneloux had said, remarked that he'd known a
priest who had lost his faith during the war, as the result of seeing a young man's face
with both eyes destroyed.



"Paneloux is right," Tarrou continued. "When an innocent youth can have his eyes
destroyed, a Christian should either lose his faith or consent to having his eyes destroyed.



Paneloux declines to lose his faith, and he will go through with it to the end. That's what
he meant to say."



It may be that this remark of Tarrou's throws some light on the regrettable events
which followed, in the course of which the priest's conduct seemed inexplicable to his
friends. The reader will judge for himself.



A few days after the sermon Paneloux had to move out of his rooms. It was a time
when many people were obliged to change their residence owing to the new conditions
created by the plague. Thus Tarrou, when his hotel was requisitioned, had gone to live
with Rieux, and now the Father had to vacate the lodgings provided for him by his Order
and stay in the house of a pious old lady who had so far escaped the epidemic. During the
process of moving, Paneloux had been feeling more run down than ever, mentally as well
as physically. And it was this that put him in the bad books of his hostess. One evening
when she was enthusiastically vaunting the merits of St. Odilia's prophecies, the priest
betrayed a slight impatience, due probably to fatigue. All his subsequent efforts to bring
the good lady round to, anyhow, a state of benevolent neutrality came to nothing. He had
made a bad impression and it went on rankling. So each night on his way to his bedroom,
where almost all the furniture was dotted with crochet covers, he had to contemplate the
back of his hostess seated in her drawing-room and carry away with him a memory of the
sour "Good night, Father," she flung at him over her shoulder. It was on one such evening
that he felt, like a flood bursting the dikes, the turbulent onrush in his wrists and temples
of the fever latent in his blood for several days past.



The only available account of what followed comes from the lips of the old lady.



Next morning she rose early, as was her wont. After an hour or so, puzzled at not
seeing the Father leave his room, she brought herself, not without some hesitation, to
knock at his door. She found him still in bed after a sleepless night. He had difficulty in
breathing and looked more flushed than usual. She had suggested most politely (as she
put it) that a doctor should be called in, but her suggestion had been brushed aside with a
curtness that she described as "quite unmannerly." So she had no alternative but to. leave
the room. Later in the morning the Father rang and asked if he could see her. He
apologized for his lack of courtesy and assured her that what he was suffering from could
not be plague, as he had none of the symptoms; it was no more than a passing
indisposition. The lady replied with dignity that her suggestion had not been prompted by
any apprehension of that sort, she took no thought for her personal security, which was in
God's hands, but that she felt a certain measure of responsibility for the Father's welfare
while he was under her roof. When he said nothing, his hostess, wishing (according to her
account) to do her duty by him, offered to send for her doctor. Father Paneloux told her
not to trouble, adding some explanations that seemed to the old lady incoherent, not to
say nonsensical.



The only thing she gathered, and it was precisely this that appeared to her so
incomprehensible, was that the Father refused to hear of a doctor's visit because it was
against his principles. Her impression was that her guest's mind had been unhinged by
fever, and she confined herself to bringing him a cup of tea.



Resolutely mindful of the obligations imposed on her by the situation, she visited
the invalid regularly every two hours. What struck her most about him was his
restlessness, which continued throughout the day. He would throw off the blankets, then
pull them back, and he kept running his hand over his forehead, which was glistening
with sweat. Every now and then he sat up in bed and tried to clear his throat with a thick,
grating cough, which sounded almost like retching. At these moments he seemed to be
vainly struggling to force up from his lungs a clot of some semi-solid substance that was
choking him. After each unavailing effort, he sank back, utterly exhausted, on the pillow.



Then he would raise himself again a little and stare straight in front of him with a fixity
even more dismaying than the paroxysms which had preceded it. Even now the old lady
was reluctant to annoy her guest by calling in the doctor. After all, it might be no more
than an attack of fever, spectacular as were its manifestations.



However, in the afternoon she made another attempt to talk to the priest, but she
could get out of him no more than a few rambling phrases. She renewed her proposal to
call in the doctor. Whereat Paneloux sat up and in a stifled voice emphatically declined to
see a doctor. Under these circumstances it seemed best to the old lady to wait till the
following morning; if the Father's condition showed no more improvement she would
ring up the number announced ten times daily on the radio by the Ransdoc Information
Bureau. Still conscious of her obligations, she resolved to visit the invalid from time to
time in the course of the night and give him any attention he might need. But after
bringing him a decoction of herbal tea she decided to lie down for a while. Only at
daybreak did she wake up, and then she hurried to the priest's room.



Father Paneloux was lying quite still; his face had lost its deep flush of the
previous day and had now a deathly pallor, all the more impressive because the cheeks
had kept their fullness. He was gazing up at the bead fringe of a lamp hanging above the
bed. When the old lady came in he turned his head to her. As she quaintly put it, he
looked as if he'd been severely thrashed all the night long, and more dead than alive. She
was greatly struck by the apathy of his voice when, on her asking how he was feeling, he
replied that he was in a bad way, he did not need a doctor, and all he wished was to be
taken to the hospital, so as to comply with the regulations. Panic-stricken, she hurried to
the telephone.



Rieux came at noon. After hearing what the old lady had to say he replied briefly
that Paneloux was right, but it was probably too late. The Father welcomed him with the
same air of complete indifference. Rieux examined him and was surprised to find none of
the characteristic symptoms of bubonic or pneumonic plague, except congestion and
obstruction of the lungs. But his pulse was so weak and his general state so alarming that
there was little hope of saving him.



"You have none of the specific symptoms of the disease," Rieux told him. "But I
admit one can't be sure, and I must isolate you."



The Father smiled queerly, as if for politeness' sake, but said nothing. Rieux left
the room to telephone, then came back and looked at the priest.



"I'll stay with you," he said gently.



Paneloux showed a little more animation and a sort of warmth came back to his
eyes when he looked up at the doctor. Then, speaking with such difficulty that it was
impossible to tell if there was sadness in his voice, he said:



"Thanks. But priests can have no friends. They have given their all to God."



He asked for the crucifix that hung above the head of the bed; when given it, he
turned away to gaze at it.



At the hospital Paneloux did not utter a word. He submitted passively to the
treatment given him, but never let go of the crucifix. However, his case continued
doubtful, and Rieux could not feel sure how to diagnose it. For several weeks, indeed, the
disease had seemed to make a point of confounding diagnoses. In the case of Paneloux,
what followed was to show that this uncertainty had no consequence.



His temperature rose. Throughout the day the cough grew louder, racking the
enfeebled body. At last, at nightfall, Father Paneloux brought up the clot of matter that
was choking him; it was red. Even at the height of his fever Paneloux's eyes kept their
blank serenity, and when, next morning, he was found dead, his body drooping over the
bedside, they betrayed nothing. Against his name the index card recorded: "Doubtful
case."



All Souls' Day that year was very different from what it had been in former years.



True, the weather was seasonable; there had been sudden change, and the great heat had
given place to mild autumnal air. As in other years a cool wind blew all day, and big
clouds raced from one horizon to the other, trailing shadows over the houses upon which
fell again, when they had passed, the pale gold light of a November sky.



The first waterproofs made their appearance. Indeed, one was struck by the
number of glossy, rubberized garments to be seen. The reason was that our newspapers
had informed us that two hundred years previously, during the great pestilences of
southern Europe, the doctors wore oiled clothing as a safeguard against infection. The
shops had seized this opportunity of unloading their stock of out-of-fashion waterproofs,
which their purchasers fondly hoped would guarantee immunity from germs.



But these familiar aspects of All Souls' Day could not make us forget that the
cemeteries were left unvisited. In previous years the rather sickly smell of
chrysanthemums had filled the streetcars, while long lines of women could be seen
making pilgrimage to the places where members of the family were buried, to lay flowers
on the graves. This was the day when they made amends for the oblivion and dereliction
in which their dead had slept for many a long month.



But in the plague year people no longer wished to be reminded of their dead.



Because, indeed, they were thinking all too much about them as it was. There was
no more question of revisiting them with a shade of regret and much melancholy.



They were no longer the forsaken to whom, one day in the year, you came to
justify yourself. They were intruders whom you would rather forget. This is why the Day
of the Dead this year was tacitly but willfully ignored. As Cottard dryly remarked, Tarrou
noted that the habit of irony was growing on him more and more, each day was for us a
Day of the Dead.



And, in fact, the balefires of the pestilence were blazing ever more merrily in the
crematorium. It is true that the actual number of deaths showed no increase.



But it seemed that plague had settled in for good at its most virulent, and it took
its daily toll of deaths with the punctual zeal of a good civil servant.



Theoretically, and in the view of the authorities, this was a hopeful sign. The fact
that the graph after its long rising curve had flattened out seemed to many, Dr. Richard
for example, reassuring. "The graph's good today," he would remark, rubbing his hands.



To his mind the disease had reached what he called high-water mark. Thereafter it could
but ebb. He gave the credit of this to Dr.



Castel's new serum, which, indeed, had brought off some quite unlooked-for
recoveries. While not dissenting, the old doctor reminded him that the future remained
uncertain; history proved that epidemics have a way of recrudescing when least expected.



The authorities, who had long been desirous of giving a fillip to the morale of the
populace, but had so far been prevented by the plague from doing so, now proposed to
convene a meeting of the medical corps and ask for an announcement on the subject.



Unfortunately, just before the meeting was due to take place, Dr. Richard, too, was
carried off by the plague, then precisely at "high-water mark."



The effect of this regrettable event, which, sensational as it was, actually proved
nothing, was to make our authorities swing back to pessimism as inconsequently as they
had previously indulged in optimism. As for Castel, he confined himself to preparing his
serums with the maximum of care. By this time no public place or building had escaped
conversion into a hospital or quarantine camp with the exception of the Prefect's offices,
which were needed for administrative purposes and committee meetings. In a general
way, however, owing to the relative stability of the epidemic at this time, Rieux's
organizations were still able to cope with the situation. Though working constantly at
high pressure, the doctors and their helpers were not forced to contemplate still greater
efforts. All they had to do was to carry on automatically, so to speak, their all but
superhuman task. The pneumonic type of infection, cases of which had already been
detected, was now spreading all over the town; one could almost believe that the high
winds were kindling and fanning its flames in people's chests. The victims of pneumonic
plague succumbed much more quickly, after coughing up blood-stained sputum. This
new form of the epidemic looked like being more contagious as well as even more fatal.



However, the opinions of experts had always been divided on this matter. For greater
safety all sanitary workers wore masks of sterilized muslin. On the face of it, the disease
should have extended its ravages. But, the cases of bubonic plague showing a decrease,
the death-rate remained constant.



Meanwhile the authorities had another cause for anxiety in the difficulty of
maintaining the food-supply. Profiteers were taking a hand and purveying at enormous
prices essential foodstuffs not available in the shops. The result was that poor families
were in great straits, while the rich went short of practically nothing. Thus, whereas
plague by its impartial ministrations should have promoted equality among our
townsfolk, it now had the opposite effect and, thanks to the habitual conflict of cupidities,
exacerbated the sense of injustice rankling in men's hearts. They were assured, of course,
of the inerrable equality of death, but nobody wanted that kind of equality.



Poor people who were feeling the pinch thought still more nostalgically of towns
and villages in the near-by countryside, where bread was cheap and life without
restrictions. Indeed, they had a natural if illogical feeling that they should have been
permitted to move out to these happier places. The feeling was embodied in a slogan
shouted in the streets and chalked up on walls: "Bread or fresh air!" This half-ironical
battle-cry was the signal for some demonstrations that, though easily repressed, made
everyone aware that an ugly mood was developing among us.



The newspapers, needless to say, complied with the instructions given them:



optimism at all costs. If one was to believe what one read in them, our populace was
giving "a fine example of courage and composure." But in a town thrown back upon
itself, in which nothing could be kept secret, no one had illusions about the "example"



given by the public. To form a correct idea about the courage and composure talked about
by our journalists you had only to visit one of the quarantine depots or isolation camps
established by our authorities. As it so happens, the narrator, being fully occupied
elsewhere, had no occasion to visit any of them, and must fall back on Tarrou's diary for
a description of the conditions in these places.



Tarrou gives an account of a visit he made, accompanied by Rambert, to the camp
located in the municipal stadium.



The stadium lies on the outskirts of the town, between a street along which runs a
car line and a stretch of waste land extending to the extreme edge of the plateau on which
Oran is built. It was already surrounded by high concrete walls and all that was needed to
make escape practically impossible was to post sentries at the four entrance gates. The
walls served another purpose: they screened the unfortunates in quarantine from the view
of people on the road.



Against this advantage may be set the fact that the inmates could hear all day,
though they could not see them, the passing streetcars, and recognize by the increased
volume of sound coming from the road the hours when people had knocked off work or
were going to it. And this brought home to them that the life from which they were
debarred was going on as before, within a few yards of them, and that those high walls
parted two worlds as alien to each other as two different planets.



Tarrou and Rambert chose a Sunday afternoon for their visit to the stadium. They
were accompanied by Gonzales, the football-player, with whom Rambert had kept in
contact and who had let himself be persuaded into undertaking, in rotation with others,
the surveillance of the camp. This visit was to enable Rambert to introduce Gonzales to
the camp commandant. When they met that afternoon, Gonzales's first remark was that
this was exactly the time when, before the plague, he used to start getting into his football
togs. Now that the sports fields had been requisitioned, all that was of the past, and
Gonzales was feeling, and showed it, at a loose end. This was one of the reasons why he
had accepted the post proposed by Rambert, but he made it a condition that he was to be
on duty during week-ends only.



The sky was overcast and, glancing up at it, Gonzales observed regretfully that a
day like this, neither too hot nor rainy, would have been perfect for a game.



And then he fell to conjuring up, as best he could, the once familiar smell of
embrocation in the dressing-rooms, the stands crowded with people, the colored shirts of
the players, showing up brightly against the tawny soil, the lemons at intermission or
bottled lemonade that titillated parched throats with a thousand refreshing pin-pricks.



Tarrou also records how on the way, as they walked the shabby outer streets, the
footballer gave kicks to all the small loose stones. His object was to shoot them into the
sewer-holes of the gutters, and whenever he did this, he would shout: "Goal!" When he
had finished his cigarette he spat the stub in front of him and tried to catch it on his toe
before it touched the ground. Some children were playing near the stadium, and when one
of them sent a ball toward the three men, Gonzales went out of his way to return it neatly.



On entering the stadium they found the stands full of people. The field was dotted
with several hundred red tents, inside which one had glimpses of bedding and bundles of
clothes or rugs. The stands had been kept open for the use of the internees in hot or rainy
weather. But it was a rule of the camp that everyone must be in his tent at sunset.



Shower-baths had been installed under the stands, and what used to be the players'
dressing-rooms converted into offices and infirmaries. The majority of the inmates of the
camp were sitting about on the stands. Some, however, were strolling on the touchlines,
and a few, squatting at the entrances of their tents, were listlessly contemplating the scene
around them. In the stands many of those slumped on the wooden tiers had a look of
vague expectancy.



"What do they do with themselves all day?" Tarrou asked Rambert.



"Nothing."



Almost all, indeed, had empty hands and idly dangling arms. Another curious
thing about this multitude of derelicts was its silence.



"When they first came there was such a din you couldn't hear yourself speak,"



Rambert said. "But as the days went by they grew quieter and quieter."



In his notes Tarrou gives what to his mind would explain this change. He pictures
them in the early days bundled together in the tents, listening to the buzz of flies,
scratching themselves, and, whenever they found an obliging listener, shrilly voicing
their fear or indignation. But when the camp grew overcrowded, fewer and fewer people
were inclined to play the part of sympathetic listener. So they had no choice but to hold
their peace and nurse their mistrust of everything and everyone. One had, indeed, a
feeling that suspicion was falling, dewlike, from the grayly shining sky over the brick-red
camp.



Yes, there was suspicion in the eyes of all. Obviously, they were thinking, there
must be some good reason for the isolation inflicted on them, and they had the air of
people who are puzzling over their problem and are afraid. Everyone Tarrou set eyes on
had that vacant gaze and was visibly suffering from the complete break with all that life
had meant to him. And since they could not be thinking of their death all the time, they
thought of nothing. They were on vacation.



"But worst of all," Tarrou writes, "is that they're forgotten, and they know it.



Their friends have forgotten them because they have other things to think about,
naturally enough. And those they love have forgotten them because all their energies are
devoted to making schemes and taking steps to get them out of the camp. And by dint of
always thinking about these schemes and steps they have ceased thinking about those
whose release they're trying to secure. And that, too, is natural enough. In fact, it comes
to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For
really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day,
without letting one's thoughts be diverted by anything, by meals, by a fly that settles on
one's cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always
flies and itches. That's why life is difficult to live. And these people know it only too
well."



The camp manager came up; a gentleman named Othon, he said, would like to see
them. Leaving Gonzales in the office, he led the others to a corner of the grandstand,
where they saw M. Othon sitting by himself. He rose as they approached.



The magistrate was dressed exactly as in the past and still wore a stiff collar.



The only changes Tarrou noted were that the tufts of hair over his temples were
not brushed back and that one of his shoelaces was undone. M. Othon appeared very tired
and not once did he look his visitors in the face. He said he was glad to see them and
requested them to thank Dr. Rieux for all he had done.



Some moments of silence ensued, then with an effort the magistrate spoke again:



"I hope Jacques did not suffer too much."



This was the first time Tarrou heard him utter his son's name, and he realized that
something had changed. The sun was setting and, flooding through a rift in the clouds,
the level rays raked the stands, tingeing their faces with a yellow glow.



"No," Tarrou said. "No, I couldn't really say he suffered."



When they took their leave, the magistrate was still gazing toward the light.



They called in at the office to say good-by to Gonzales, whom they found
studying the duty roster. The footballer was laughing when he shook hands with them.



"Anyhow, I'm back in the good old dressing-room," he chuckled. "That's
something to go on with."



Soon after, when the camp manager was seeing Tarrou and Rambert out, they
heard a crackling noise coming from the stands. A moment later the loud-speakers, which
in happier times served to announce the results of games or to introduce the teams,
informed the inmates of the camp that they were to go back to their tents for the evening
meal. Slowly everyone filed off the stands and shuffled toward the tents. After all were
under canvas two small electric trucks, of the kind used for transporting baggage on
railroad platforms, began to wend their way between the tents. While the occupants held
forth their arms, two ladles plunged into the two big cauldrons on each truck and neatly
tipped their contents into the waiting mess-kits. Then the truck moved on to the next tent.



"Very efficient," Tarrou remarked.



The camp manager beamed as he shook hands.



"Yes, isn't it? We're great believers in efficiency in this camp."



Dusk was falling. The sky had cleared and the camp was bathed in cool, soft light.



Through the hush of evening came a faint tinkle of spoons and plates.



Above the tents bats were circling, vanishing abruptly into the darkness. A
streetcar squealed on a switch outside the walls.



"Poor Monsieur Othon!" Tarrou murmured as the gate closed behind them. "One
would like to do something to help him. But how can you help a judge?"



There were other camps of much the same kind in the town, but the narrator, for
lack of firsthand information and in deference to veracity, has nothing to add about them.



This much, however, he can say; the mere existence of these camps, the smell of crowded
humanity coming from them, the baying of their loud-speakers in the dusk, the air of
mystery that clung about them, and the dread these forbidden places inspired told
seriously on our fellow citizens' morale and added to the general nervousness and
apprehension. Breaches of the peace and minor riots became more frequent.



As November drew to a close, the mornings turned much colder. Heavy
downpours had scoured the streets and washed the sky clean of clouds. In the mornings a
weak sunlight bathed the town in a cold, sparkling sheen. The air warmed up, however,
as night approached. It was such a night that Tarrou chose for telling something of
himself to Dr. Rieux.



After a particularly tiring day, about ten o'clock Tarrou proposed to the doctor
that they should go together for the evening visit to Rieux's old asthma patient. There was
a soft glow above the housetops in the Old Town and a light breeze fanned their faces at
the street crossings. Coming from the silent streets, they found the old man's loquacity
rather irksome at first. He launched into a long harangue to the effect that some folks
were getting fed up, that it was always the same people had all the jam, and things
couldn't go on like that indefinitely, one day there'd be, he rubbed his hands, "a fine old
row." He continued expatiating on this theme all the time the doctor was attending to
him.



They heard footsteps overhead. Noticing Tarrou's upward glance, the old woman
explained that it was the girls from next door walking on the terrace. She added that one
had a lovely view up there, and that as the terraces in this part of the town often joined up
with the next one on one side, the women could visit their neighbors without having to go
into the street.



"Why not go up and have a look?" the old man suggested. "You'll get a breath of
nice fresh air."



They found nobody on the terrace, only three empty chairs. On one side, as far as
eye could reach, was a row of terraces, the most remote of which abutted on a dark,
rugged mass that they recognized as the hill nearest the town. On the other side, spanning
some streets and the unseen harbor, their gaze came to rest on the horizon, where sea and
sky merged in a dim, vibrant grayness. Beyond a black patch that they knew to be the
cliffs a sudden glow, whose source they could not see, sprang up at regular intervals; the
lighthouse at the entrance of the fairway was still functioning for the benefit of ships that,
passing Oran's unused harbor, went on to other ports along the coast. In a sky swept
crystal-clear by the night wind, the stars showed like silver flakes, tarnished now and then
by the yellow gleam of the revolving light. Perfumes of spice and warm stone were
wafted on the breeze.



Everything was very still.



"A pleasant spot," said Rieux as he lowered himself into a chair. "You'd think that
plague had never found its way up here."



Tarrou was gazing seawards, his back to the doctor.



"Yes," he replied after a moment's silence, "it's good to be here."



Then, settling into the chair beside Rieux, he fixed his eyes on his face. Three
times the glow spread up the sky and died away. A faint clatter of crockery rose from a
room opening on the street below. A door banged somewhere in the house.



"Rieux," Tarrou said in a quite ordinary tone, "do you realize that you've never
tried to find out anything about me, the man I am? Can I regard you as a friend?"



"Yes, of course, we're friends; only so far we haven't had much time to show it."



"Good. That gives me confidence. Suppose we now take an hour off, for
friendship?"



Rieux smiled by way of answer.



"Well, here goes!"



There was a long faint hiss some streets off, the sound of a car speeding on the
wet pavement. It died away; then some vague shouts a long way off broke the stillness
again. Then, like a dense veil slowly falling from the starry sky on the two men, silence
returned. Tarrou had moved and now was sitting on the parapet, facing Rieux, who was
slumped back in his chair. All that could be seen of him was a dark, bulky form outlined
against the glimmering sky. He had much to tell; what follows gives it more or less in his
own words.



"To make things simpler, Rieux, let me begin by saying I had plague already, long
before I came to this town and encountered it here. Which is tantamount to saying I'm
like everybody else. Only there are some people who don't know it, or feel at ease in that
condition; others know and want to get out of it.



Personally, I've always wanted to get out of it.



"When I was young I lived with the idea of my innocence; that is to say, with no
idea at all. I'm not the self-tormenting kind of person, and I made a suitable start in life. I
brought off everything I set my hand to, I moved at ease in the field of the intellect, I got
on excellently with women, and if I had occasional qualms, they passed as lightly as they
came. Then one day I started thinking.



And now?



"I should tell you I wasn't poor in my young days, as you were. My father had an
important post, he was prosecuting attorney; but to look at him, you'd never have guessed
it; he appeared, and was, a kindly, good-natured man. My mother was a simple, rather
shy woman, and I've always loved her greatly; but I'd rather not talk about her. My father
was always very kind to me, and I even think he tried to understand me. He wasn't a
model husband. I know that now, but I can't say it shocks me particularly. Even in his
infidelities he behaved as one could count on his behaving and never gave rise to scandal.



In short, he wasn't at all original and, now he's dead, I realize that, while no plaster saint,
he was a very decent man as men go. He kept the middle way, that's all; he was the type
of man for whom one has an affection of the mild but steady order, which is the kind that
wears best.



"My father had one peculiarity; the big railway directory was his bedside book.



Not that he often took a train; almost his only journeys were to Brittany, where he had a
small country house to which we went every summer. But he was a walking timetable; he
could tell you the exact times of departure and arrival of the Paris-Berlin expresses; how
to get from Lyon to Warsaw, which trains to take and at what hours; the precise distance
between any two capital cities you might mention. Could you tell me offhand how to get
from Briancon to Chamonix? Even a station-master would scratch his head, I should say.



Well, my father had the answer pat. Almost every evening he enlarged his knowledge of
the subject, and he prided himself on it. This hobby of his much amused me; I would put
complicated travel problems to him and check his answers afterwards by the railway
directory. They were invariably correct. My father and I got on together excellently,
thanks largely to these railway games we played in the evenings; I was exactly the
audience he needed, attentive and appreciative. Personally I regarded this
accomplishment of his as quite as admirable in its ways as most accomplishments.



"But I'm letting my tongue run away with me and attributing too much importance
to that worthy man. Actually he played only an indirect role in the great change of heart
about which I want to tell you. The most he did to me was to touch off a train of thoughts.



When I was seventeen my father asked me to come to hear him speak in court. There was
a big case on at the assizes, and probably he thought I'd see him to his best advantage.



Also I suspect he hoped I'd be duly impressed by the pomp and ceremony of the law and
encouraged to take up his profession. I could tell he was keen on my going, and the
prospect of seeing a side of my father's character so different from that we saw at home
appealed to me. Those were absolutely the only reasons I had for going to the trial. What
happened in a court had always seemed to me as natural, as much in the order of things,
as a military parade on the Fourteenth of July or a school speech day. My notions on the
subject were purely abstract, and I'd never given it serious thought.



"The only picture I carried away with me of that day's proceedings was a picture
of the criminal. I have little doubt he was guilty, of what crime is no great matter. That
little man of about thirty, with sparse, sandy hair, seemed so eager to confess everything,
so genuinely horrified at what he'd done and what was going to be done with him, that
after a few minutes I had eyes for nothing and nobody else. He looked like a yellow owl
scared blind by too much light. His tie was slightly awry, he kept biting his nails, those of
one hand only, his right
I needn't go on, need I? You've understood, he was a living
human being.



"As for me, it came on me suddenly, in a flash of understanding; until then I'd
thought of him only under his commonplace official designation, as 'the defendant.' And
though I can't say I quite forgot my father, something seemed to grip my vitals at that
moment and riveted all my attention on the little man in the dock. I hardly heard what
was being said; I only knew that they were set on killing that living man, and an uprush
of some elemental instinct, like a wave, had swept me to his side. And I did not really
wake up until my father rose to address the court.



"In his red gown he was another man, no longer genial or good-natured; his
mouth spewed out long, turgid phrases like an endless stream of snakes. I realized he was
clamoring for the prisoner's death, telling the jury that they owed it to society to find him
guilty; he went so far as to demand that the man should have his head cut off. Not exactly
in those words, I admit. 'He must pay the supreme penalty,' was the formula. But the
difference, really, was slight, and the result the same. He had the head he asked for. Only
of course it wasn't he who did the actual job. I, who saw the whole business through to its
conclusion, felt a far closer, far more terrifying intimacy with that wretched man than my
father can ever have felt. Nevertheless, it fell to him, in the course of his duties, to be
present at what's politely termed the prisoner's last moments, but what would be better
called murder in its most despicable form.



"From that day on I couldn't even see the railway directory without a shudder of
disgust. I took a horrified interest in legal proceedings, death sentences, executions, and I
realized with dismay that my father must have often witnessed those brutal murders, on
the days when, as I'd noticed without guessing what it meant, he rose very early in the
morning. I remembered he used to wind his alarm-clock on those occasions, to make
sure. I didn't dare to broach the subject with my mother, but I watched her now more
closely and saw that their life in common had ceased to mean anything, she had
abandoned hope. That helped me to 'forgive her,' as I put it to myself at the time. Later
on, I learned that there'd been nothing to forgive; she'd been quite poor until her marriage,
and poverty had taught her resignation.



"Probably you're expecting me to tell you that I left home at once. No, I stayed on
many months, nearly a year, in fact. Then one evening my father asked for the alarm-
clock as he had to get up early. I couldn't sleep that night. Next day, when he came home,
I'd gone.



"To cut a long story short, I had a letter from my father, who had set inquiries on
foot to find me, I went to see him, and, without explaining my reasons, told him quite
calmly that I'd kill myself if he forced me to return. He wound up by letting me have my
way, he was, as I've said, a kindly man at bottom, gave me a lecture on the silliness of
wanting to 'live my life' (that was how he accounted for my conduct and I didn't
undeceive him), and plenty of good advice. I could see he really felt it deeply and it was
an effort for him to keep back his tears. Subsequently, but quite a long time after that, I
formed a habit of visiting my mother periodically, and I always saw him on these
occasions. 1 imagine these infrequent meetings satisfied my father. Personally, I hadn't
the least antipathy to him, only a little sadness of heart. When he died I had my mother
come to live with me, and she'd still be with me if she were alive.



"I've had to dwell on my start in life, since for me it really was the start of
everything. I'll get on more quickly now. I came to grips with poverty when I was
eighteen, after an easy life till then. I tried all sorts of jobs, and I didn't do too badly. But
my real interest in life was the death penalty; I wanted to square accounts with that poor
blind owl in the dock. So I became an agitator, as they say. I didn't want to be pestiferous,
that's all. To my mind the social order around me was based on the death sentence, and
by righting the established order I'd be fighting against murder. That was my view, others
had told me so, and I still think that this belief of mine was substantially true. I joined
forces with a group of people I then liked, and indeed have never ceased to like. I spent
many years in close cooperation with them, and there's not a country in Europe in whose
struggles I haven't played a part. But that's another story.



"Needless to say, I knew that we, too, on occasion, passed sentences of death.



But I was told that these few deaths were inevitable for the building up of a new
world in which murder would cease to be. That also was true up to a point, and maybe
I'm not capable of standing fast where that order of truths is concerned.



Whatever the explanation, I hesitated. But then I remembered that miserable owl
in the dock and it enabled me to keep on. Until the day when I was present at an
execution, it was in Hungary, and exactly the same dazed horror that I'd experienced as a
youngster made everything reel before my eyes.



"Have you ever seen a man shot by a firing-squad? No, of course not; the
spectators are hand-picked and it's like a private party, you need an invitation. The result
is that you've gleaned your ideas about it from books and pictures. A post, a blindfolded
man, some soldiers in the offing. But the real thing isn't a bit like that. Do you know that
the firing-squad stands only a yard and a half from the condemned man? Do you know
that if the victim took two steps forward his chest would touch the rifles? Do you know
that, at this short range, the soldiers concentrate their fire on the region of the heart and
their big bullets make a hole into which you could thrust your fist? No, you didn't know
all that; those are things that are never spoken of. For the plague-stricken their peace of
mind is more important than a human life. Decent folks must be allowed to sleep easy o'
nights, mustn't they? Really it would be shockingly bad taste to linger on such details,
that's common knowledge. But personally I've never been able to sleep well since then.



The bad taste remained in my mouth and I've kept lingering on the details, brooding over
them.



"And thus I came to understand that I, anyhow, had had plague through all those
long years in which, paradoxically enough, I'd believed with all my soul that I was
fighting it. I learned that I had had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people;
that I'd even brought about their deaths by approving of acts and principles which could
only end that way. Others did not seem embarrassed by such thoughts, or anyhow never
voiced them of their own accord.



But I was different; what I'd come to know stuck in my gorge. I was with them
and yet I was alone. When I spoke of these matters they told me not to be so squeamish; I
should remember what great issues were at stake. And they advanced arguments, often
quite impressive ones, to make me swallow what none the less I couldn't bring myself to
stomach. I replied that the most eminent of the plague-stricken, the men who wear red
robes, also have excellent arguments to justify what they do, and once I admitted the
arguments of necessity and force majeure put forward by the less eminent, I couldn't
reject those of the eminent. To which they retorted that the surest way of playing the
game of the red robes was to leave to them the monopoly of the death penalty. My reply
to this was that if you gave in once, there was no reason for not continuing to give in. It
seems to me that history has borne me out; today there's a sort of competition who will
kill the most. They're all mad over murder and they couldn't stop killing men even if they
wanted to.



"In any case, my concern was not with arguments. It was with the poor owl; with
that foul procedure whereby dirty mouths stinking of plague told a fettered man that he
was going to die, and scientifically arranged things so that he should die, after nights and
nights of mental torture while he waited to be murdered in cold blood. My concern was
with that hole in a man's chest. And I told myself that meanwhile, so far anyhow as I was
concerned, nothing in the world would induce me to accept any argument that justified
such butcheries. Yes, I chose to be blindly obstinate, pending the day when I could see
my way more clearly.



"I'm still of the same mind. For many years I've been ashamed, mortally ashamed,
of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my
turn. As time went on I merely learned that even those who were better than the rest
could not keep themselves nowadays from killing or letting others kill, because such is
the logic by which they live; and that we can't stir a finger in this world without the risk
of bringing death to somebody. Yes, I've been ashamed ever since; I have realized that
we all have plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still
trying to understand all those others and not to be the mortal enemy of anyone. I only
know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that's the only
way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. This, and only
this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible
and even, sometimes, a little good. So that is why I resolved to have no truck with
anything which, directly or indirectly, for good reasons or for bad, brings death to anyone
or justifies others' putting him to death.



"That, too, is why this epidemic has taught me nothing new, except that I must
fight it at your side. I know positively, yes, Rieux, I can say I know the world inside out,
as you may see, that each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free
from it. And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless
moment we breathe in somebody's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is
the microbe. All the rest, health, integrity, purity (if you like), is a product of the human
will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly
anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs tremendous will-
power, a never ending tension of the mind, to avoid such lapses. Yes, Rieux, it's a
wearying business, being plague-stricken. But it's still more wearying to refuse to be it.



That's why everybody in the world today looks so tired; everyone is more or less sick of
plague. But that is also why some of us, those who want to get the plague out of their
systems, feel such desperate weariness, a weariness from which nothing remains to set us
free except death.



"Pending that release, I know I have no place in the world of today; once I'd
definitely refused to kill, I doomed myself to an exile that can never end. I leave it to
others to make history. I know, too, that I'm not qualified to pass judgment on those
others. There's something lacking in my mental make-up, and its lack prevents me from
being a rational murderer. So it's a deficiency, not a superiority. But as things are, I'm
willing to be as I am; I've learned modesty.



All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and
it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound
simple to the point of childishness; I can't judge if it's simple, but I know it's true. You
see, I'd heard such quantities of arguments, which very nearly turned my head, and turned
other people's heads enough to make them approve of murder; and I'd come to realize that
all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clean-cut language. So I resolved
always to speak, and to act, quite clearly, as this was the only way of setting myself on
the right track. That's why I say there are pestilences and there are victims; no more than
that. If, by making that statement, I, too, become a carrier of "the plague-germ, at least I
don't do it willfully. I try, in short, to be an innocent murderer. You see, I've no great
ambitions. "I grant we should add a third category: that of the true healers. But it's a fact
one doesn't come across many of them, and anyhow it must be a hard vocation. That's
why I decided to take, in every predicament, the victims' side, so as to reduce the damage
done. Among them I can at least try to discover how one attains to the third category; in
other words, to peace."



Tarrou was swinging his leg, tapping the terrace lightly with his heel, as he
concluded. After a short silence the doctor raised himself a little in his chair and asked if
Tarrou had an idea of the path to follow for attaining peace.



"Yes," he replied. "The path of sympathy."



Two ambulances were clanging in the distance. The dispersed shouts they had
been hearing off and on drew together on the outskirts of the town, near the stony hill,
and presently there was a sound like a gunshot. Then silence fell again.



Rieux counted two flashes of the revolving light. The breeze freshened and a gust
coming from the sea filled the air for a moment with the smell of brine.



And at the same time they clearly heard the low sound of waves lapping the foot
of the cliffs.



"It comes to this," Tarrou said almost casually; "what interests me is learning how
to become a saint."



"But you don't believe in God."



"Exactly! Can one be a saint without God?, that's the problem, in fact the only
problem, I'm up against today."



A sudden blaze sprang up above the place the shouts had come from and,
stemming the wind-stream, a rumor of many voices came to their ears. The blaze died
down almost at once, leaving behind it only a dull red glow. Then in a break of the wind
they distinctly heard some strident yells and the discharge of a gun, followed by the roar
of an angry crowd. Tarrou stood up and listened, but nothing more could be heard.



"Another skirmish at the gates, I suppose."



"Well, it's over now," Rieux said.



Tarrou said in a low voice that it was never over, and there would be more
victims, because that was in the order of things.



"Perhaps," the doctor answered. "But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the
defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What
interests me is being a man."



"Yes, we're both after the same thing, but I'm less ambitious."



Rieux supposed Tarrou was jesting and turned to him with a smile. But, faintly lit
by the dim radiance falling from the sky, the face he saw was sad and earnest. There was
another gust of wind and Rieux felt it warm on his skin. Tarrou gave himself a little
shake.



"Do you know," he said, "what we now should do for friendship's sake?"



"Anything you like, Tarrou."



"Go for a swim. It's one of these harmless pleasures that even a saint-to-be can
indulge in, don't you agree?" Rieux smiled again, and Tarrou continued: "With our
passes, we can get out on the pier. Really, it's too damn silly living only in and for the
plague. Of course, a man should fight for the victims, but if he ceases caring for anything
outside that, what's the use of his fighting?"



"Right," Rieux said. "Let's go."



Some minutes later the car drew up at the harbor gates. The moon had risen and a
milk-white radiance, dappled with shadows, lay around them. Behind them rose the town,
tier on tier, and from it came warm, fetid breaths of air that urged them toward the sea.



After showing their passes to a guard, who inspected them minutely, they crossed some
open ground littered with casks, and headed toward the pier. The air here reeked of stale
wine and fish. Just before they reached the pier a smell of iodine and seaweed announced
the nearness of the sea and they clearly heard the sound of waves breaking gently on the
big stone blocks.



Once they were on the pier they saw the sea spread out before them, a gently
heaving expanse of deep-piled velvet, supple and sleek as a creature of the wild. They sat
down on a boulder facing the open. Slowly the waters rose and sank, and with their
tranquil breathing sudden oily glints formed and flickered over the surface in a haze of
broken lights. Before them the darkness stretched out into infinity. Rieux could feel under
his hand the gnarled, weather-worn visage of the rocks, and a strange happiness
possessed him. Turning to Tarrou, he caught a glimpse on his friend's face of the same
happiness, a happiness that forgot nothing, not even murder.



They undressed, and Rieux dived in first. After the first shock of cold had passed
and he came back to the surface the water seemed tepid. When he had taken a few strokes
he found that the sea was warm that night with the warmth of autumn seas that borrow
from the shore the accumulated heat of the long days of summer. The movement of his
feet left a foaming wake as he swam steadily ahead, and the water slipped along his arms
to close in tightly on his legs. A loud splash told him that Tarrou had dived. Rieux lay on
his back and stayed motionless, gazing up at the dome of sky lit by the stars and moon.



He drew a deep breath. Then he heard a sound of beaten water, louder and louder,
amazingly clear in the hollow silence of the night. Tarrou was coming up with him, he
now could hear his breathing.



Rieux turned and swam level with his friend, timing his stroke to Tarrou's. But
Tarrou was the stronger swimmer and Rieux had to put on speed to keep up with him. For
some minutes they swam side by side, with the same zest, in the same rhythm, isolated
from the world, at last free of the town and of the plague.



Rieux was the first to stop and they swam back slowly, except at one point, where
unexpectedly they found themselves caught in an ice-cold current. Their energy whipped
up by this trap the sea had sprung on them, both struck out more vigorously.



They dressed and started back. Neither had said a word, but they were conscious
of being perfectly at one, and the memory of this night would be cherished by them both.



When they caught sight of the plague watchman, Rieux guessed that Tarrou, like himself,
was thinking that the disease had given them a respite, and this was good, but now they
must set their shoulders to the wheel again.



Yes, the plague gave short shrift indeed, and they must set their shoulders to the
wheel again. Throughout December it smoldered in the chests of our townsfolk, fed the
fires in the crematorium, and peopled the camps with human jetsam. In short, it never
ceased progressing with its characteristically jerky but unfaltering stride. The authorities
had optimistically reckoned on the coming of winter to halt its progress, but it lasted
through the first cold spells without the least remission. So the only thing for us to do was
to go on waiting, and since after a too long waiting one gives up waiting, the whole town
lived as if it had no future.



As for Dr. Rieux, that brief hour of peace and friendship which had been granted
him was not, and could not be, repeated. Yet another hospital had been opened, and his
only converse was with his patients. However, he noticed a change at this stage of the
epidemic, now that the plague was assuming more and more the pneumonic form; the
patients seemed, after their fashion, to be seconding the doctor. Instead of giving way to
the prostration or the frenzies of the early period, they appeared to have a clearer idea of
where their interests lay and on their own initiative asked for what might be most
beneficial. Thus they were always clamoring for something to drink and insisted on being
kept as warm as possible. And though the demands on him were as exhausting as before,
Rieux no longer had the impression of putting up a solitary fight; the patients were co-
operating. Toward the end of December he received a letter from M. Othon, who was still
in quarantine. The magistrate stated that his quarantine period was over; unfortunately the
date of his admission to camp seemed to have been mislaid by the secretariat, and if he
was still detained it was certainly due to a mistake.



His wife, recently released from quarantine, had gone to the Prefect's office to
protest and had been rudely treated; they had told her that the office never made mistakes.



Rieux asked Rambert to look into the matter, and a few days later M. Othon called on
him. There had, in fact, been a mistake, and Rieux showed some indignation. But M.



Othon, who had grown thinner, raised a limp, deprecating hand; weighing his words, he
said that everyone could make mistakes. And the doctor thought to himself that decidedly
something had changed.



"What will you do now, Monsieur Othon?" Rieux asked. "I suppose you have a
pile of work awaiting you."



"Well, as a matter of fact, I'm putting in for some leave."



"I quite understand. You need a rest."



"It's not that. I want to go back to the camp."



Rieux couldn't believe his ears. "But you've only just come out of it!"



"I'm afraid I did not make myself clear. I'm told there are some voluntary workers
from government offices in that camp." The magistrate rolled his round eyes a little and
tried to smooth down a tuft of hair. "It would keep me busy, you see. And also, I know it
may sound absurd, but I'd feel less separated from my little boy."



Rieux stared at him. Could it be that a sudden gentleness showed in those hard,
inexpressive eyes? Yes, they had grown misted, lost their steely glitter.



"Certainly," Rieux said. "Since that's your wish, I'll fix it up for you."



The doctor kept his word; and the life of the plague-ridden town resumed its
course until Christmas. Tarrou continued to bring his quiet efficiency to bear on every
problem. Rambert confided in the doctor that, with the connivance of the two young
guards, he was sending letters to his wife and now and then receiving an answer. He
suggested to Rieux that he should avail himself of this clandestine channel, and Rieux
agreed to do so. For the first time for many months he sat down to write a letter. He
found it a laborious business, as if he were manipulating a language that he had forgotten.



The letter was dispatched.



The reply was slow in coming. As for Cottard, he was prospering, making money
hand over fist in small, somewhat shady transactions. With Grand, however, it was
otherwise; the Christmas season did not seem to agree with him.



Indeed, Christmas that year had none of its old-time associations; it smacked of
hell rather than of heaven. Empty, unlighted shops, dummy chocolates or empty boxes in
the confectioners' windows, streetcars laden with listless, dispirited passengers, all was as
unlike previous Christmastides as it well could be. In the past all the townspeople, rich
and poor alike, indulged in seasonable festivity; now only a privileged few, those with
money to burn, could do so, and they caroused in shamefast solitude in a dingy back shop
or a private room. In the churches there were more supplications than carols.



You saw a few children, too young to realize what threatened them, playing in the
frosty, cheerless streets. But no one dared to bid them welcome-in the God of former
days, bringer of gifts, and old as human sorrow, yet new as the hopes of youth. There was
no room in any heart but for a very old, gray hope, that hope which keeps men from
letting themselves drift into death and is nothing but a dogged will to live.



Grand had failed to show up as usual on the previous evening. Feeling somewhat
anxious, Rieux called at his place early in the morning, but he wasn't at home.



His friends were asked to keep a lookout for him. At about eleven Rambert came
to the hospital with the news that he'd had a distant glimpse of Grand, who seemed to be
wandering aimlessly, "looking very queer." Unfortunately he had lost sight of him almost
at once. Tarrou and the doctor set out in the car to hunt for Grand.



At noon Rieux stepped out of his car into the frozen air; he had just caught sight
of Grand some distance away, his face glued to a shop-window full of crudely carved
wooden toys. Tears were steadily flowing down the old fellow's cheeks, and they wrung
the doctor's heart, for he could understand them, and he felt his own tears welling up in
sympathy. A picture rose before him of that scene of long ago, the youngster standing in
front of another shop-window, like this one dressed for Christmas, and Jeanne turning
toward him in a sudden access of emotion and saying how happy she was. He could
guess that through the mists of the past years, from the depth of his fond despair, Jeanne's
young voice was rising, echoing in Grand's ears. And he knew, also, what the old man
was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a
dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work,
and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of
a loving heart.



Grand saw the doctor's reflection in the window. Still weeping, he turned and,
leaning against the shop-front, watched Rieux approach.



"Oh, doctor, doctor!" He could say no more.



Rieux, too, couldn't speak; he made a vague, understanding gesture. At this
moment he suffered with Grand's sorrow, and what filled his breast was the passionate
indignation we feel when confronted by the anguish all men share.



"Yes, Grand," he murmured.



"Oh, if only I could have time to write to her! To let her know... and to let her be
happy without remorse!"



Almost roughly Rieux took Grand's arm and drew him forward. Grand did not
resist and went on muttering broken phrases.



"Too long! It's lasted too long. All the time one's wanting to let oneself go, and
then one day one has to. Oh, doctor, I know I look a quiet sort, just like anybody else. But
it's always been a terrible effort only to be, just normal. And now, well, even that's too
much for me."



He stopped dead. He was trembling violently, his eyes were fever-bright. Rieux
took his hand; it was burning hot.



"You must go home."



But Grand wrenched himself free and started running. After a few steps he halted
and stretched out his arms, swaying to and fro. Then he spun round on himself and fell
flat on the pavement, his face stained with the tears that went on flowing. Some people
who were approaching stopped abruptly and watched the scene from a little way off, not
daring to come nearer. Rieux had to carry the old man to the car.



Grand lay in bed, gasping for breath; his lungs were congested. Rieux pondered.



The old fellow hadn't any family. What would be the point of having him evacuated? He
and Tarrou could look after him.



Grand's head was buried in the pillow, his cheeks were a greenish gray, his eyes
had gone dull, opaque. He seemed to be gazing fixedly at the scanty fire Tarrou was
kindling with the remains of an old packing-case. "I'm in a bad way," he muttered. A
queer crackling sound came from his flame-seared lungs whenever he tried to speak.



Rieux told him not to talk and promised to come back. The sick man's lips parted in a
curious smile, and a look of humorous complicity flickered across the haggard face. "If I
pull through, doctor, hats off!" A moment later he sank into extreme prostration.



Visiting him again some hours later, they found him half sitting up in bed, and
Rieux was horrified by the rapid change that had come over his face, ravaged by the fires
of the disease consuming him. However, he seemed more lucid and almost immediately
asked them to get his manuscript from the drawer where he always kept it. When Tarrou
handed him the sheets, he pressed them to his chest without looking at them, then held
them out to the doctor, indicating by a gesture that he was to read them. There were some
fifty pages of manuscript. Glancing through them, Rieux saw that the bulk of the writing
consisted of the same sentence written again and again with small variants,
simplifications or elaborations.



Persistently the month of May, the lady on horseback, the avenues of the Bois
recurred, regrouped in different patterns. There were, besides, explanatory notes, some
exceedingly long, and lists of alternatives. But at the foot of the last page was written in a
studiously clear hand: "My dearest Jeanne, Today is Christmas Day and..." Eight words
only. Above it, in copperplate script, was the latest version of the famous phrase. "Read
it," Grand whispered. And Rieux read:



"One fine morning in May, a slim young horsewoman might have been seen
riding a glossy sorrel mare along the avenues of the Bois, among the flowers
"



"Is that it?" There was a feverish quaver in the old voice. Rieux refrained from
looking at him, and he began to toss about in the bed. "Yes, I know. I know what you're
thinking. 'Fine' isn't the word. It's?"



Rieux clasped his hand under the coverlet.



"No, doctor. It's too late, no time..." His breast heaved painfully, then suddenly he
said in a loud, shrill voice: "Burn it!"



The doctor hesitated, but Grand repeated his injunction in so violent a tone and
with such agony in his voice that Rieux walked across to the fireplace and dropped the
sheets on the dying fire. It blazed up, and there was a sudden flood of light, a fleeting
warmth, in the room. When the doctor came back to the bed, Grand had his back turned,
his face almost touching the wall. After injecting the serum Rieux whispered to his friend
that Grand wouldn't last the night, and Tarrou volunteered to stay with him. The doctor
approved.



All night Rieux was haunted by the idea of Grand's death. But next morning he
found his patient sitting up in bed, talking to Tarrou. His temperature was down to
normal and there were no symptoms other than a generalized prostration.



"Yes, doctor," Grand said. "I was overhasty. But I'll make another start. You'll
see, I can remember every word."



Rieux looked at Tarrou dubiously. "We must wait," he said.



But at noon there was no change. By nightfall Grand could be considered out of
danger. Rieux was completely baffled by this "resurrection."



Other surprises were in store for him. About the same time there was brought to
the hospital a girl whose case Rieux diagnosed as hopeless, and he had her sent
immediately to the isolation ward. She was delirious' and had all the symptoms of
pneumonic plague. Next morning, however, the temperature had fallen. As in Grand's
case the doctor assumed this was the ordinary morning fall that his experience had taught
him to regard as a bad sign. But at noon her temperature still showed no rise and at night
it went up only a few degrees.



Next morning it was down to normal. Though very exhausted, the girl was
breathing freely. Rieux remarked to Tarrou that her recovery was "against all the rules!"



But in the course of the next week four similar cases came to his notice.



The old asthma patient was bubbling over with excitement when Rieux and
Tarrou visited him at the end of the week.



"Would you ever have believed it! They're coming out again," he said.



"Who?"



"Why, the rats!"



Not one dead or living rat had been seen in the town since April.



"Does that mean it's starting all over again?" Tarrou asked Rieux.



The old man was rubbing his hands.



"You should see 'em running, doctor! It's a treat, it is!"



He himself had seen two rats slipping into the house by the street door, and some
neighbors, too, had told him they'd seen rats in their basements. In some houses people
had heard those, once familiar scratchings and rustlings behind the woodwork. Rieux
awaited with much interest the mortality figures that were announced every Monday.



They showed a decrease.



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     Part 4 -- Added : January 24, 2021

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