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Title: The Plague
Date: 1948
Source: https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-plague.pdf
Notes: Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert
Authors: Albert Camus
Topics: Disease, Philosophy, Fiction, Existentialism, Absurdism
Published: 2020-05-16 20:29:22Z

It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to

represent anything that really exists by that which exists not.

DANIEL DEFOE

PART I

The unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194- at Oran. Everyone agreed

that, considering their somewhat extraordinary character, they were out of place there.

For its ordinariness is what strikes one first about the town of Oran, which is merely a

large French port on the Algerian coast, headquarters of the Prefect of a French

Department.

The town itself, let us admit, is ugly. It has a smug, placid air and you need time

to discover what it is that makes it different from so many business centers in other parts

of the world. How to conjure up a picture, for instance, of a town without pigeons,

without any trees or gardens, where you never hear the beat of wings or the rustle of

leaves, a thoroughly negative place, in short?

The seasons are discriminated only in the sky. All that tells you of spring's

coming is the feel of the air, or the baskets of flowers brought in from the suburbs by

peddlers; it's a spring cried in the marketplaces. During the summer the sun bakes the

houses bone-dry, sprinkles our walls with grayish dust, and you have no option but to

survive those days of fire indoors, behind closed shutters. In autumn, on the other hand,

we have deluges of mud. Only winter brings really pleasant weather.

Perhaps the easiest way of making a town's acquaintance is to ascertain how the

people in it work, how they love, and how they die. In our little town (is this, one

wonders, an effect of the climate? All three are done on much the same lines, with the

same feverish yet casual air. The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to

cultivating habits. Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their

chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, "doing

business." Naturally they don't eschew such simpler pleasures as love-making,

seabathing, going to the pictures. But, very sensibly, they reserve these pastimes for

Saturday afternoons and Sundays and employ the rest of the week in making money, as

much as possible. In the evening, on leaving the office, they forgather, at an hour that

never varies, in the cafes, stroll the same boulevard, or take the air on their balconies. The

passions of the young are violent and short-lived; the vices of older men seldom range

beyond an addiction to bowling, to banquets and "socials," or clubs where large sums

change hands on the fall of a card.

It will be said, no doubt, that these habits are not peculiar to our town; really all

our contemporaries are much the same. Certainly nothing is commoner nowadays than to

see people working from morn till night and then proceeding to fritter away at card-

tables, in cafes and in small-talk what time is left for living. Nevertheless there still exist

towns and countries where people have now and then an inkling of something different.

In general it doesn't change their lives. Still, they have had an intimation, and that's so

much to the good. Oran, however, seems to be a town without intimations; in other

words, completely modern. Hence I see no need to dwell on the manner of loving in our

town. The men and women consume one another rapidly in what is called "the act of

love," or else settle down to a mild habit of conjugality. We seldom find a mean between

these extremes. That, too, is not exceptional. At Oran, as elsewhere, for lack of time and

thinking, people have to love one another without knowing much about it.

What is more exceptional in our town is the difficulty one may experience there in

dying. "Difficulty," perhaps, is not the right word, 'discomfort" would come nearer. Being

ill's never agreeable but there are towns that stand by you, so to speak, when you are sick;

in which you can, after a fashion, let yourself go.

An invalid needs small attentions, he likes to have something to rely on, and that's

natural enough. But at Oran the violent extremes of temperature, the exigencies of

business, the uninspiring surroundings, the sudden nightfalls, and the very nature of its

pleasures call for good health. An invalid feels out of it there.

Think what it must be for a dying man, trapped behind hundreds of walls all

sizzling with heat, while the whole population, sitting in cafes or hanging on the

telephone, is discussing shipments, bills of lading, discounts! It will then be obvious what

discomfort attends death, even modern death, when it waylays you under such conditions

in a dry place.

These somewhat haphazard observations may give a fair idea of what our town is

like. However, we must not exaggerate. Really, all that was to be conveyed was the

banality of the town's appearance and of life in it. But you can get through the days there

without trouble, once you have formed habits. And since habits are precisely what our

town encourages, all is for the best. Viewed from this angle, its life is not particularly

exciting; that must be admitted. But, at least, social unrest is quite unknown among us.

And our frank-spoken, amiable, and industrious citizens have always inspired a

reasonable esteem in visitors.

Treeless, glamourless, soulless, the town of Oran ends by seeming restful and,

after a while, you go complacently to sleep there.

It is only fair to add that Oran is grafted on to a unique landscape, in the center of

a bare plateau, ringed with luminous hills and above a perfectly shaped bay. All we may

regret is the town's being so disposed that it turns its back on the bay, with the result that

it's impossible to see the sea, you always have to go to look for it.

Such being the normal life of Oran, it will be easily understood that our fellow

citizens had not the faintest reason to apprehend the incidents that took place in the spring

of the year in question and were (as we subsequently realized) premonitory signs of the

grave events we are to chronicle. To some, these events will seem quite natural; to others,

all but incredible. But, obviously, a narrator cannot take account of these differences of

outlook. His business is only to say: "This is what happened," when he knows that it

actually did happen, that it closely affected the life of a whole populace, and that there are

thousands of eyewitnesses who can appraise in their hearts the truth of what he writes.

In any case the narrator (whose identity will be made known in due course) would

have little claim to competence for a task like this, had not chance put him in the way of

gathering much information, and had he not been, by the force of things, closely involved

in all that he proposes to narrate. This is his justification for playing the part of a

historian. Naturally, a historian, even an amateur, always has data, personal or at second

hand, to guide him. The present narrator has three kinds of data: first, what he saw

himself; secondly, the accounts of other eyewitnesses (thanks to the part he played, he

was enabled to learn their personal impressions from all those figuring in this chronicle);

and, lastly, documents that subsequently came into his hands. He proposes to draw on

these records whenever this seems desirable, and to employ them as he thinks best. He

also proposes...

But perhaps the time has come to drop preliminaries and cautionary remarks and

to launch into the narrative proper. The account of the first days needs giving in some

detail.

When leaving his surgery on the morning of April 16, Dr. Bernard Rieux felt

something soft under his foot. It was a dead rat lying in the middle of the landing.

On the spur of the moment he kicked it to one side and, without giving it a further

thought, continued on his way downstairs. Only when he was stepping out into the street

did it occur to him that a dead rat had no business to be on his landing, and he turned

back to ask the concierge of the building to see to its removal. It was not until he noticed

old M. Michel's reaction to the news that he realized the peculiar nature of his discovery.

Personally, he had thought the presence of the dead rat rather odd, no more than that; the

concierge, however, was genuinely outraged. On one point he was categorical: "There

weren't no rats here." In vain the doctor assured him that there was a rat, presumably

dead, on the second-floor landing; M. Michel's conviction wasn't to be shaken. There

"weren't no rats in the building," he repeated, so someone must have brought this one

from outside. Some youngster trying to be funny, most likely.

That evening, when Dr. Rieux was standing in the entrance, feeling for the latch-

key in his pocket before starting up the stairs to his apartment, he saw a big rat coming

toward him from the dark end of the passage. It moved uncertainly, and its fur was

sopping wet. The animal stopped and seemed to be trying to get its balance, moved

forward again toward the doctor, halted again, then spun round on itself with a little

squeal and fell on its side. Its mouth was slightly open and blood was spurting from it.

After gazing at it for a moment, the doctor went upstairs.

He wasn't thinking about the rat. That glimpse of spurting blood had switched his

thoughts back to something that had been on his mind all day. His wife, who had been ill

for a year now, was due to leave next day for a sanatorium in the mountains. He found

her lying down in the bedroom, resting, as he had asked her to do, in view of the

exhausting journey before her. She gave him a smile.

"Do you know, I'm feeling ever so much better!" she said.

The doctor gazed down at the face that turned toward him in the glow of the

bedside lamp. His wife was thirty, and the long illness had left its mark on her face. Yet

the thought that came to Rieux's mind as he gazed at her was: "How young she looks,

almost like a little girl!" But perhaps that was because of the smile, which effaced all

else.

"Now try to sleep," he counseled. "The nurse is coming at eleven, you know, and

you have to catch the midday train."

He kissed the slightly moist forehead. The smile escorted him to the door.

Next day, April 17, at eight o'clock the concierge buttonholed the doctor as he

was going out. Some young scallywags, he said, had dumped three dead rats in the hall.

They'd obviously been caught in traps with very strong springs, as they were bleeding

profusely. The concierge had lingered in the doorway for quite a while, holding the rats

by their legs and keeping a sharp eye on the passers-by, on the off chance that the

miscreants would give themselves away by grinning or by some facetious remark. His

watch had been in vain.

"But I'll nab 'em all right," said M. Michel hopefully.

Much puzzled, Rieux decided to begin his round in the outskirts of the town,

where his poorer patients lived. The scavenging in these districts was done late in the

morning and, as he drove his car along the straight, dusty streets, he cast glances at the

garbage cans aligned along the edge of the sidewalk. In one street alone the doctor

counted as many as a dozen rats deposited on the vegetable and other refuse in the cans.

He found his first patient, an asthma case of long standing, in bed, in a room that

served as both dining-room and bedroom and overlooked the street. The invalid was an

old Spaniard with a hard, rugged face. Placed on the coverlet in front of him were two

pots containing dried peas. When the doctor entered, the old man was sitting up, bending

his neck back, gasping and wheezing in his efforts to recover his breath. His wife brought

a bowl of water.

"Well, doctor," he said, while the injection was being made, "they're coming out,

have you noticed?"

"The rats, he means," his wife explained. "The man next door found three."

"They're coming out, you can see them in all the trash cans. It's hunger!"

Rieux soon discovered that the rats were the great topic of conversation in that

part of the town. After his round of visits he drove home.

"There's a telegram for you, sir, upstairs," M. Michel informed him.

The doctor asked him if he'd seen any more rats.

"No," the concierge replied, "there ain't been any more. I'm keeping a sharp

lookout, you know. Those youngsters wouldn't dare when I'm around."

The telegram informed Rieux that his mother would be arriving next day. She was

going to keep house for her son during his wife's absence. When the doctor entered his

apartment he found the nurse already there. He looked at his wife.

She was in a tailor-made suit, and he noticed that she had used rouge. He smiled

to her.

"That's splendid," he said. "You're looking very nice."

A few minutes later he was seeing her into the sleeping-car. She glanced round

the compartment.

"It's too expensive for us really, isn't it?"

"It had to be done," Rieux replied.

"What's this story about rats that's going round?"

"I can't explain it. It certainly is queer, but it'll pass."

Then hurriedly he begged her to forgive him; he felt he should have looked after

her better, he'd been most remiss. When she shook her head, as if to make him stop, he

added: "Anyhow, once you're back everything will be better. We'll make a fresh start."

"That's it!" Her eyes were sparkling. "Let's make a fresh start."

But then she turned her head and seemed to be gazing through the car window at

the people on the platform, jostling one another in their haste. The hissing of the

locomotive reached their ears. Gently he called his wife's first name; when she looked

round he saw her face wet with tears.

"Don't," he murmured.

Behind the tears the smile returned, a little tense. She drew a deep breath.

"Now off you go! Everything will be all right."

He took her in his arms, then stepped back on the platform. Now he could only

see her smile through the window.

"Please, dear," he said, "take great care of yourself."

But she could not hear him.

As he was leaving the platform, near the exit he met M. Othon, the police

magistrate, holding his small boy by the hand. The doctor asked him if he was going

away.

Tall and dark, M. Othon had something of the air of what used to be called a man

of the world, and something of an undertaker's assistant.

"No," the magistrate replied, "I've come to meet Madame Othon, who's been to

present her respects to my family."

The engine whistled.

"These rats, now?" the magistrate began.

Rieux made a brief movement in the direction of the train, then turned back

toward the exit.

"The rats?" he said. "It's nothing."

The only impression of that moment which, afterwards, he could recall was the

passing of a railroadman with a box full of dead rats under his arm.

Early in the afternoon of that day, when his consultations were beginning, a

young man called on Rieux. The doctor gathered that he had called before, in the

morning, and was a journalist by profession. His name was Raymond Rambert.

Short, square-shouldered, with a determined-looking face and keen, intelligent

eyes, he gave the impression of someone who could keep his end up in any

circumstances. He wore a sports type of clothes. He came straight to the point.

His newspaper, one of the leading Paris dailies, had commissioned him to make a

report on the living-conditions prevailing among the Arab population, and especially on

the sanitary conditions.

Rieux replied that these conditions were not good. But, before he said any more,

he wanted to know if the journalist would be allowed to tell the truth.

"Certainly," Rambert replied.

"I mean," Rieux explained, "would you be allowed to publish an unqualified

condemnation of the present state of things?"

"Unqualified? Well, no, I couldn't go that far. But surely things aren't quite so bad

as that?"

"No," Rieux said quietly, they weren't so bad as that. He had put the question

solely to find out if Rambert could or couldn't state the facts without paltering with the

truth. "I've no use for statements in which something is kept back," he added. "That is

why I shall not furnish information in support of yours."

The journalist smiled. "You talk the language of Saint-Just."

Without raising his voice Rieux said he knew nothing about that. The language he

used was that of a man who was sick and tired of the world he lived in, though he had

much liking for his fellow men and had resolved, for his part, to have no truck with

injustice and compromises with the truth.

His shoulders hunched, Rambert gazed at the doctor for some moments without

speaking. Then, "I think I understand you," he said, getting up from his chair.

The doctor accompanied him to the door.

"It's good of you to take it like that," he said.

"Yes, yes, I understand," Rambert repeated, with what seemed a hint of

impatience in his voice. "Sorry to have troubled you."

When shaking hands with him, Rieux suggested that if he was out for curious

stories for his paper, he might say something about the extraordinary number of dead rats

that were being found in the town just now.

"Ah!" Rambert exclaimed. "That certainly interests me."

On his way out at five for another round of visits, the doctor passed on the

stairway a stocky, youngish man, with a big, deeply furrowed face and bushy eyebrows.

He had met him once or twice in the top-floor apartment, which was occupied by some

male Spanish dancers. Puffing a cigarette, Jean Tarrou was gazing down at the

convulsions of a rat dying on the step in front of him. He looked up, and his gray eyes

remained fixed on the doctor for some moments; then, after wishing him good day, he

remarked that it was rather odd, the way all these rats were coming out of their holes to

die.

"Very odd," Rieux agreed, "and it ends by getting on one's nerves."

"In a way, doctor, only in a way. We've not seen anything of the sort before, that's

all. Personally I find it interesting, yes, definitely interesting."

Tarrou ran his fingers through his hair to brush it off his forehead, looked again at

the rat, which had now stopped moving, then smiled toward Rieux.

"But really, doctor, it's the concierge's headache, isn't it?"

As it so happened, the concierge was the next person Rieux encountered. He was

leaning against the wall beside the street door; he was looking tired and his normally

rubicund face had lost its color.

"Yes, I know," the old man told Rieux, who had informed him of the latest

casualty among the rats. "I keep finding 'em by twos and threes. But it's the same thing in

the other houses in the street."

He seemed depressed and worried, and was scratching his neck absentmindedly.

Rieux asked him how he felt. The concierge wouldn't go so far as to say he was

feeling ill. Still he wasn't quite up to the mark. In his opinion it was just due to worry;

these damned rats had given him "a shock, like." It would be a relief when they stopped

coming out and dying all over the place.

Next morning, it was April 18, when the doctor was bringing back his mother

from the station, he found M. Michel looking still more out of sorts. The stairway from

the cellar to the attics was strewn with dead rats, ten or a dozen of them.

The garbage cans of all the houses in the street were full of rats.

The doctor's mother took it quite calmly.

"It's like that sometimes," she said vaguely. She was a small woman with silver

hair and dark, gentle eyes. "I'm so glad to be with you again, Bernard," she added. "The

rats can't change that, anyhow."

He nodded. It was a fact that everything seemed easy when she was there.

However, he rang up the Municipal Office. He knew the man in charge of the

department concerned with the extermination of vermin and he asked him if he'd heard

about all the rats that were coming out to die in the open. Yes, Mercier knew all about it;

in fact, fifty rats had been found in his offices, which were near the wharves. To tell the

truth, he was rather perturbed; did the doctor think it meant anything serious? Rieux

couldn't give a definite opinion, but he thought the sanitary service should take action of

some kind.

Mercier agreed. "And, if you think it's really worth the trouble, I'll get an order

issued as well."

"It certainly is worth the trouble," Rieux replied.

His charwoman had just told him that several hundred dead rats had been

collected in the big factory where her husband worked.

It was about this time that our townsfolk began to show signs of uneasiness.

For, from April 18 onwards, quantities of dead or dying rats were found in

factories and warehouses. In some cases the animals were killed to put an end to their

agony. From the outer suburbs to the center of the town, in all the byways where the

doctor's duties took him, in every thoroughfare, rats were piled up in garbage cans or

lying in long lines in the gutters. The evening papers that day took up the matter and

inquired whether or not the city fathers were going to take steps, and what emergency

measures were contemplated, to abate this particularly disgusting nuisance. Actually the

municipality had not contemplated doing anything at all, but now a meeting was

convened to discuss the situation.

An order was transmitted to the sanitary service to collect the dead rats at

daybreak every morning. When the rats had been collected, two municipal trucks were to

take them to be burned in the town incinerator.

But the situation worsened in the following days. There were more and more dead

vermin in the streets, and the collectors had bigger truckloads every morning.

On the fourth day the rats began to come out and die in batches. From basements,

cellars, and sewers they emerged in long wavering files into the light of day, swayed

helplessly, then did a sort of pirouette and fell dead at the feet of the horrified onlookers.

At night, in passages and alleys, their shrill little death-cries could be clearly heard. In the

mornings the bodies were found lining the gutters, each with a gout of blood, like a red

flower, on its tapering muzzle; some were bloated and already beginning to rot, others

rigid, with their whiskers still erect. Even in the busy heart of the town you found them

piled in little heaps on landings and in backyards. Some stole forth to die singly in the

halls of public offices, in school playgrounds, and even on cafe terraces. Our townsfolk

were amazed to find such busy centers as the Place d'Armes, the boulevards, the

promenade along the waterfront, dotted with repulsive little corpses. After the daily

clean-up of the town, which took place at sunrise, there was a brief respite; then gradually

the rats began to appear again in numbers that went on increasing throughout the day.

People out at night would often feel underfoot the squelchy roundness of a still warm

body. It was as if the earth on which our houses stood were being purged of its secreted

humors; thrusting up to the surface the abscesses and pus-clots that had been forming in

its entrails. You must picture the consternation of our little town, hitherto so tranquil, and

now, out of the blue, shaken to its core, like a quite healthy man who all of a sudden feels

his temperature shoot up and the blood seething like wildfire in his veins.

Things went so far that the Ransdoc Information Bureau (inquiries on all subjects

promptly and accurately answered), which ran a free-information talk on the radio, by

way of publicity, began its talk by announcing that no less than 6,231 rats had been

collected and burned in a single day, April 25. Giving as it did an ampler and more

precise view of the scene daily enacted before our eyes, this amazing figure administered

a jolt to the public nerves. Hitherto people had merely grumbled at a stupid, rather

obnoxious visitation; they now realized that this strange phenomenon, whose scope could

not be measured and whose origins escaped detection, had something vaguely menacing

about it. Only the old Spaniard whom Dr. Rieux was treating for asthma went on rubbing

his hands and chuckling: "They're coming out, they're coming out," with senile glee.

On April 28, when the Ransdoc Bureau announced that 8,ooo rats had been

collected, a wave of something like panic swept the town.

There was a demand for drastic measures, the authorities were accused of

slackness, and people who had houses on the coast spoke of moving there, early in the

year though it was. But next day the bureau informed them that the phenomenon had

abruptly ended and the sanitary service had collected only a trifling number of rats.

Everyone breathed more freely.

It was, however, on this same day, at noon, that Dr. Rieux, when parking his car

in front of the apartment house where he lived, noticed the concierge coming toward him

from the end of the street. He was dragging himself along, his head bent, arms and legs

curiously splayed out, with the jerky movements of a clockwork doll. The old man was

leaning on the arm of a priest whom the doctor knew. It was Father Paneloux, a learned

and militant Jesuit, whom he had met occasionally and who was very highly thought of in

our town, even in circles quite indifferent to religion. Rieux waited for the two men to

draw up to him.

M. Michel's eyes were fever-bright and he was breathing wheezily. The old man

explained that, feeling "a bit off color," he had gone out to take the air. But he had started

feeling pains in all sorts of places, in his neck, armpits, and groin, and had been obliged

to turn back and ask Father Paneloux to give him an arm.

"It's just swellings," he said. "I must have strained myself somehow."

Leaning out of the window of the car, the doctor ran his hand over the base of

Michel's neck; a hard lump, like a knot in wood, had formed there.

"Go to bed at once, and take your temperature. I'll come to see you this

afternoon."

When the old man had gone, Rieux asked Father Paneloux what he made of this

queer business about the rats.

"Oh, I suppose it's an epidemic they've been having." The Father's eyes were

smiling behind his big round glasses.

After lunch, while Rieux was reading for the second time the telegram his wife

had sent him from the sanatorium, announcing her arrival, the phone rang. It was one of

his former patients, a clerk in the Municipal Office, ringing him up. He had suffered for a

long time from a constriction of the aorta, and, as he was poor, Rieux had charged no fee.

"Thanks, doctor, for remembering me. But this time it's somebody else. The man

next door has had an accident. Please come at once." He sounded out of breath.

Rieux thought quickly; yes, he could see the concierge afterwards. A few minutes

later he was entering a small house in the rue Faidherbe, on the outskirts of the town.

Halfway up the drafty, foul-smelling stairs, he saw Joseph Grand, the clerk, hurrying

down to meet him. He was a man of about fifty years of age, tall and drooping, with

narrow shoulders, thin limbs, and a yellowish mustache.

"He looks better now," he told Rieux, "but I really thought his number was up."

He blew his nose vigorously.

On the top floor, the third, Rieux noticed something scrawled in red chalk on a

door on the left: Come in, I've hanged myself.

They entered the room. A rope dangled from a hanging lamp above a chair lying

on its side. The dining-room table had been pushed into a corner. But the rope hung

empty.

"I got him down just in time." Grand seemed always to have trouble in finding his

words, though he expressed himself in the simplest possible way. "I was going out and I

heard a noise. When I saw that writing on the door, I thought it was a a prank. Only, then

I heard a funny sort of groan; it made my blood run cold, as they say." He scratched his

head. "That must be a painful way of of doing it, I should think. Naturally I went in."

Grand had opened a door and they were standing on the threshold of a bright but

scantily furnished bedroom. There was a brass bedstead against one of the walls, and a

plump little man was lying there, breathing heavily. He gazed at them with bloodshot

eyes. Rieux stopped short. In the intervals of the man's breathing he seemed to hear the

little squeals of rats. But he couldn't see anything moving in the corners of the room.

Then he went to the bedside. Evidently the man had not fallen from a sufficient height, or

very suddenly, for the collar-bone had held.

Naturally there was some asphyxia. An X-ray photograph would be needed.

Meanwhile the doctor gave him a camphor injection and assured him he would be

all right in a few days.

"Thanks, doctor," the man mumbled.

When Rieux asked Grand if he had notified the police, he hung his head.

"Well, as a matter of fact, I haven't. The first thing, I thought, was to?"

"Quite so," Rieux cut in. "I'll see to it."

But the invalid made a fretful gesture and sat up in bed. He felt much better, he

explained; really it wasn't worth the trouble.

"Don't feel alarmed," Rieux said. "It's little more than a formality. Anyhow, I have

to report this to the police."

"Oh!" The man slumped back on the bed and started sobbing weakly.

Grand, who had been twiddling his mustache while they were speaking, went up

to the bed.

"Come, Monsieur Cottard," he said. "Try to understand. People could say the

doctor was to blame, if you took it into your head to have another shot at it."

Cottard assured him tearfully that there wasn't the least risk of that; he'd had a sort

of crazy fit, but it had passed and all he wanted now was to be left in peace. Rieux was

writing a prescription.

"Very well," he said. "We'll say no more about it for the present. I'll come and see

you again in a day or two. But don't do anything silly."

On the landing he told Grand that he was obliged to make a report, but would ask

the police inspector to hold up the inquiry for a couple of days.

"But somebody should watch Cottard tonight," he added. "Has he any relations?"

"Not that I know of. But I can very well stay with him. I can't say I really know

him, but one's got to help a neighbor, hasn't one?"

As he walked down the stairs Rieux caught himself glancing into the darker

corners, and he asked Grand if the rats had quite disappeared in his part of the town.

Grand had no idea. True, he'd heard some talk about rats, but he never paid much

attention to gossip like that. "I've other things to think about," he added.

Rieux, who was in a hurry to get away, was already shaking his hand. There was a

letter to write to his wife, and he wanted to see the concierge first.

News-venders were shouting the latest news that the rats had disappeared. But

Rieux found his patient leaning over the edge of the bed, one hand pressed to his belly

and the other to his neck, vomiting pinkish bile into a slop-pail.

After retching for some moments, the man lay back again, gasping. His

temperature was 103, the ganglia of his neck and limbs were swollen, and two black

patches were developing on his thighs. He now complained of internal pains.

"It's like fire," he whimpered. "The bastard's burning me inside."

He could hardly get the words through his fever-crusted lips and he gazed at the

doctor with bulging eyes that his headache had suffused with tears. His wife cast an

anxious look at Rieux, who said nothing.

"Please, doctor," she said, "what is it?"

"It might be almost anything. There's nothing definite as yet. Keep him on a light

diet and give him plenty to drink."

The sick man had been complaining of a raging thirst.

On returning to his apartment Rieux rang up his colleague Richard, one of the

leading practitioners in the town.

"No," Richard said, "I can't say I've noticed anything exceptional."

"No cases of fever with local inflammation?"

"Wait a bit! I have two cases with inflamed ganglia."

"Abnormally so?"

"Well," Richard said, "that depends on what you mean by 'normal.'"

Anyhow, that night the porter was running a temperature of 104 and in delirium,

always babbling about "them rats." Rieux tried a fixation abscess. When he felt the sting

of the turpentine, the old man yelled: "The bastards!"

The ganglia had become still larger and felt like lumps of solid fibrous matter

embedded in the flesh. Mme Michel had completely broken down.

"Sit up with him," the doctor said, "and call me if necessary."

Next day, April 30, the sky was blue and slightly misty. A warm, gentle breeze

was blowing, bringing with it a smell of flowers from the outlying suburbs. The morning

noises of the streets sounded louder, gayer than usual. For everyone in our little town this

day brought the promise of a new lease of life, now that the shadow of fear under which

they had been living for a week had lifted.

Rieux, too, was in an optimistic mood when he went down to see the concierge;

he had been cheered up by a letter from his wife that had come with the first mail.

Old M. Michel's temperature had gone down to 99 and, though he still looked

very weak, he was smiling. "He's better, doctor, isn't he?" his wife inquired. "Well, it's a

bit too early to say."

At noon the sick man's temperature shot up abruptly to 104, he was in constant

delirium and had started vomiting again. The ganglia in the neck were painful to the

touch, and the old man seemed to be straining to hold his head as far as possible from his

body. His wife sat at the foot of the bed, her hands on the counterpane, gently clasping

his feet. She gazed at Rieux imploringly.

"Listen," he said, "we'll have to move him to a hospital and try a special

treatment. I'll ring up for the ambulance."

Two hours later the doctor and Mme Michel were in the ambulance bending over

the sick man. Rambling words were issuing from the gaping mouth, thickly coated now

with sores. He kept on repeating: "Them rats! Them damned rats!" His face had gone

livid, a grayish green, his lips were bloodless, his breath came in sudden gasps. His limbs

spread out by the ganglia, embedded in the berth as if he were trying to bury himself in it

or a voice from the depths of the earth were summoning him below, the unhappy man

seemed to be stifling under some unseen pressure. His wife was sobbing.

"Isn't there any hope left, doctor?"

"He's dead," said Rieux.

Michel's death marked, one might say, the end of the first period, that of bewildering

portents, and the beginning of another, relatively more trying, in which the perplexity of

the early days gradually gave place to panic. Reviewing that first phase in the light of

subsequent events, our townsfolk realized that they had never dreamed it possible that our

little town should be chosen out for the scene of such grotesque happenings as the

wholesale death of rats in broad daylight or the decease of concierges through exotic

maladies. In this respect they were wrong, and their views obviously called for revision.

Still, if things had gone thus far and no farther, force of habit would doubtless have

gained the day, as usual. But other members of our community, not all menials or poor

people, were to follow the path down which M. Michel had led the way. And it was then

that fear, and with fear serious reflection, began.

However, before entering on a detailed account of the next phase, the narrator

proposes to give the opinion of another witness on the period that has been described.

Jean Tarrou, whose acquaintance we have already made at the beginning of this narrative,

had come to Oran some weeks before and was staying in a big hotel in the center of the

town. Apparently he had private means and was not engaged in business. But though he

gradually became a familiar figure in our midst, no one knew where he hailed from or

what had brought him to Oran. He was often to be seen in public and at the beginning of

spring was seen on one or other of the beaches almost every day; obviously he was fond

of swimming. Good-humored, always ready with a smile, he seemed an addict of all

normal pleasures without being their slave. In fact, the only habit he was known to have

was that of cultivating the society of the Spanish dancers and musicians who abound in

our town.

His notebooks comprise a sort of chronicle of those strange early days we all lived

through. But an unusual type of chronicle, since the writer seems to make a point of

understatement, and at first sight we might almost imagine that Tarrou had a habit of

observing events and people through the wrong end of a telescope. In those chaotic times

he set himself to recording the history of what the normal historian passes over.

Obviously we may deplore this curious kink in his character and suspect in him a lack of

proper feeling. All the same, it is undeniable that these notebooks, which form a sort of

discursive diary, supply the chronicler of the period with a host of seeming-trivial details

which yet have their importance, and whose very oddity should be enough to prevent the

reader from passing hasty judgment on this singular man.

The earliest entries made by Jean Tarrou synchronize with his coming to Oran.

From the outset they reveal a paradoxical satisfaction at the discovery of a town

so intrinsically ugly. We find in them a minute description of the two bronze lions

adorning the Municipal Office, and appropriate comments on the lack of trees, the

hideousness of the houses, and the absurd lay-out of the town.

Tarrou sprinkles his descriptions with bits of conversation overheard in streetcars

and in the streets, never adding a comment on them except, this comes somewhat later'

in the report of a dialogue concerning a man named Camps. It was a chat between two

streetcar conductors.

"You knew Camps, didn't you?" asked one of them. "Camps? A tall chap with a

black mustache?"

"That's him. A switchman." "Ah yes, I remember now." "Well, he's dead." "Oh?

When did he die?" "After that business about the rats." "You don't say so! What did he

die of?" "I couldn't say exactly. Some kind of fever.

Of course, he never was what you might call fit. He got abscesses under the arms,

and they did him in, it seems."

"Still, he didn't look that different from other people." "I wouldn't say that. He had

a weak chest and he used to play the trombone in the town band. It's hard on the lungs,

blowing a trombone."

"Ah, if you've got weak lungs, it don't do you any good, blowing down a big

instrument like that."

After jotting down this dialogue Tarrou went on to speculate why Camps had

joined a band when it was so clearly inadvisable, and what obscure motive had led him to

risk his life for the sake of parading the streets on Sunday mornings.

We gather that Tarrou was agreeably impressed by a little scene that took place

daily on the balcony of a house facing his window. His room at the hotel looked on to a

small side street and there were always several cats sleeping in the shadow of the walls.

Every day, soon after lunch, at a time when most people stayed indoors, enjoying a siesta,

a dapper little old man stepped out on the balcony on the other side of the street. He had a

soldierly bearing, very erect, and affected a military style of dressing; his snow-white hair

was always brushed to perfect smoothness. Leaning over the balcony he would call:

"Pussy!

Pussy!" in a voice at once haughty and endearing. The cats blinked up at him with

sleep-pale eyes, but made no move as yet. He then proceeded to tear some paper into

scraps and let them fall into the street; interested by the fluttering shower of white

butterflies, the cats came forward, lifting tentative paws toward the last scraps of paper.

Then, taking careful aim, the old man would spit vigorously at the cats and, whenever a

liquid missile hit the quarry, would beam with delight.

Lastly, Tarrou seemed to have been quite fascinated by the commercial character

of the town, whose aspect, activities, and even pleasures all seemed to be dictated by

considerations of business. This idiosyncrasy, the term he uses in his diary?was warmly

approved of by Tarrou; indeed, one of his appreciative comments ends on the

exclamation: "At last!"

These are the only passages in which our visitor's record, at this period, strikes a

seemingly personal note. Its significance and the earnestness behind it might escape the

reader on a casual perusal. For example, after describing how the discovery of a dead rat

led the hotel cashier to make an error in his bill, Tarrou added: "Query: How contrive not

to waste one's time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this

can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room; by

remaining on one's balcony all a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language

one doesn't know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of

course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying

a seat; and so forth."

Then, immediately following these eccentricities of thought and expression, we

come on a detailed description of the streetcar service in the town, the structure of the

cars, their indeterminate color, their unvarying dirtiness, and he concludes his

observations with a "Very odd," which explains -nothing.

So much by way of introduction to Tarrou's comments on the phenomenon of the

rats.

"The little old fellow opposite is quite disconsolate today. There are no more cats.

The sight of all those dead rats strewn about the street may have excited their hunting

instinct; anyhow, they all have vanished. To my thinking, there's no question of their

eating the dead rats. Mine, I remember, turned up their noses at dead things. All the same,

they're probably busy hunting in the cellars, hence the old boy's plight. His hair isn't as

well brushed as usual, and he looks less alert, less military. You can see he is worried.

After a few moments he went back into the room. But first he spat once on emptiness.

"In town today a streetcar was stopped because a dead rat had been found in it.

(Query: How did it get there?) Two or three women promptly alighted. The rat

was thrown out. The car went on.

"The night watchman at the hotel, a level-headed man, assured me that all these

rats meant trouble coming. 'When the rat leave a ship...' I replied that this held good for

ships, but for towns it hadn't yet been demonstrated. But he stuck to his point. I asked

what sort of 'trouble' we might expect. That he couldn't say; disasters always come out of

the blue. But he wouldn't be surprised if there were an earthquake brewing. I admitted

that was possible, and then he asked if the prospect didn't alarm me.

" 'The only thing I'm interested in,' I told him, 'is acquiring peace of mind.'

"He understood me perfectly.

"I find a family that has its meals in this hotel quite interesting. The father is a tall,

thin man, always dressed in black and wearing a starched collar. The top of his head is

bald, with two tufts of gray hair on each side. His small, beady eyes, narrow nose, and

hard, straight mouth make him look like a well-brought-up owl. He is always first at the

door of the restaurant, stands aside to let his wife, a tiny woman, like a black mouse, go

in, and then comes in himself with a small boy and girl, dressed like performing poodles,

at his heels. When they are at the table he remains standing till his wife is seated and only

then the two poodles can perch themselves on their chairs. He uses no terms of

endearment to his family, addresses politely spiteful remarks to his wife, and bluntly tells

the kids what he thinks of them.

" 'Nicole, you're behaving quite disgracefully.'

"The little girl is on the brink of tears, which is as it should be.

"This morning the small boy was all excitement about the rats, and started saying

something on the subject.

" 'Philippe, one doesn't talk of rats at table. For the future I forbid you to use the

word.'

" 'Your father's right,' approved the mouse.

"The two poodles buried their noses in their plates, and the owl acknowledged

thanks by a curt, perfunctory nod.

"This excellent example notwithstanding, everybody in town is talking about the

rats, and the local newspaper has taken a hand. The town-topics column, usually very

varied, is now devoted exclusively to a campaign against the local authorities. 'Are our

city fathers aware that the decaying bodies of these rodents constitute a grave danger to

the population?' The manager of the hotel can talk of nothing else. But he has a personal

grievance, too; that dead rats should be found in the elevator of a three-star hotel seems to

him the end of all things. To console him, I said: 'But, you know, everybody's in the same

boat.'

" 'That's just it,' he replied. 'Now we're like everybody else.'

"He was the first to tell me about the outbreak of this queer kind of fever which is

causing much alarm. One of his chambermaids has got it.

" 'But I feel sure it's not contagious,' he hastened to assure me.

"I told him it was all the same to me.

" 'Ah, I understand, sir. You're like me, you're a fatalist.'

"I had said nothing of the kind and, what's more, am not a fatalist. I told him

so

"

From this point onwards Tarrou's entries deal in some detail with the curious

fever that was causing much anxiety among the public. When noting that the little old

man, now that the rats had ceased appearing, had regained his cats and was studiously

perfecting his shooting, Tarrou adds that a dozen or so cases of this fever were known to

have occurred, and most had ended fatally.

For the light it may throw on the narrative that follows, Tarrou's description of Dr.

Rieux may be suitably inserted here. So far as the narrator can judge, it is fairly accurate.

"Looks about thirty-five. Moderate height. Broad shoulders. Almost rectangular

face. Dark, steady eyes, but prominent jaws. A biggish, well-modeled nose. Black hair,

cropped very close. A curving mouth with thick, usually tight-set lips.

With his tanned skin, the black down on his hands and arms, the dark but

becoming suits he always wears, he reminds one of a Sicilian peasant.

"He walks quickly. When crossing a street, he steps off the sidewalk without

changing his pace, but two out of three times makes a little hop when he steps on to the

sidewalk on the other side. He is absentminded and, when driving his car, often leaves his

side-signals on after he has turned a corner. Always bareheaded. Looks knowledgeable."

Tarrou's figures were correct. Dr. Rieux was only too well aware of the serious

turn things had taken. After seeing to the isolation of the concierge's body, he had rung

up Richard and asked what he made of these inguinal-fever cases.

"I can make nothing of them," Richard confessed. "There have been two deaths,

one in forty-eight hours, the other in three days. And the second patient showed all the

signs of convalescence when I visited him on the second day."

"Please let me know if you have other cases," Rieux said.

He rang up some other colleagues. As a result of these inquiries he gathered that

there had been some twenty cases of the same type within the last few days.

Almost all had ended fatally. He then advised Richard, who was chairman of the

local Medical Association, to have any fresh cases put into isolation wards.

"Sorry," Richard said, "but I can't do anything about it. An order to that effect can

be issued only by the Prefect. Anyhow, what grounds have you for supposing there's

danger of contagion?"

"No definite grounds. But the symptoms are definitely alarming."

Richard, however, repeated that "such measures were outside his province." The

most he could do was to put the matter up to the Prefect.

But while these talks were going on, the weather changed for the worse. On the

day following old Michel's death the sky clouded up and there were brief torrential

downpours, each of which was followed by some hours of muggy heat. The aspect of the

sea, too, changed; its dark-blue translucency had gone and, under the lowering sky, it had

steely or silvery glints that hurt the eyes to look at. The damp heat of the spring made

everyone long for the coming of the dry, clean summer heat. On the town, humped snail-

wise on its plateau and shut off almost everywhere from the sea, a mood of listlessness

descended. Hemmed in by lines and lines of whitewashed walls, walking between rows

of dusty shops, or riding in the dingy yellow streetcars, you felt, as it were, trapped by the

climate. This, however, was not the case with Rieux's old Spanish patient, who welcomed

this weather with enthusiasm.

"It cooks you," he said. "Just the thing for asthma."

Certainly it "cooked you," but exactly like a fever. Indeed, "the whole town was

running a temperature; such anyhow was the impression Dr. Rieux could not shake off as

he drove to the rue Faidherbe for the inquiry into Cottard's attempted suicide. That this

impression was unreasonable he knew, and he attributed it to nervous exhaustion; he had

certainly his full share of worries just at present.

In fact, it was high time to put the brakes on and try to get his nerves into some

sort of order.

On reaching his destination he found that the police inspector hadn't turned up

yet. Grand, who met him on the landing, suggested they should wait in his place, leaving

the door open. The municipal clerk had two rooms, both very sparsely furnished. The

only objects to catch the eye were a bookshelf on which lay two or three dictionaries, and

a small blackboard on which one could just read two half-obliterated words: "flowery

avenues."

Grand announced that Cottard had had a good night. But he'd waked up this

morning with pains in his head and feeling very low. Grand, too, looked tired and

overwrought; he kept pacing up and down the room, opening and closing a portfolio

crammed with sheets of manuscript that lay on the table.

Meanwhile, however, he informed the doctor that he really knew very little about

Cottard, but believed him to have private means in a small way. Cottard was a queer bird.

For a long while their relations went no farther than wishing each other good-day when

they met on the stairs.

"I've only had two conversations with him. Some days ago I upset a box of

colored chalks I was bringing home, on the landing. They were red and blue chalks. Just

then Cottard came out of his room and he helped me pick them up. He asked me what I

wanted colored chalks for."

Grand had then explained to him that he was trying to brush up his Latin. He'd

learned it at school, of course, but his memories had grown blurred.

"You see, doctor, I've been told that a knowledge of Latin gives one a better

understanding of the real meanings of French words."

So he wrote Latin words on his blackboard, then copied out again in blue chalk

the part of each word that changed in conjugation or declension, and in red chalk the part

of the word that never varied.

"I'm not sure if Cottard followed this very clearly, but he seemed interested and

asked me for a red chalk. That rather surprised me, but after all? Of course I couldn't

guess the use he'd put it to."

Rieux asked what was the subject of their second conversation. But just then the

inspector came, accompanied by a clerk, and said he wished to begin by hearing Grand's

statement. The doctor noticed that Grand, when referring to Cottard, always called him

"the unfortunate man," and at one moment used even the expression "his grim resolve."

When discussing the possible motives for the attempted suicide, Grand showed an almost

finical anxiety over his choice of words. Finally he elected for the expression "a secret

grief." The inspector asked if there had been anything in Cottard's manner that suggested

what he called his "intent to felo-de-se."

"He knocked at my door yesterday," Grand said, "and asked me for a match. I

gave him a box. He said he was sorry to disturb me but that, as we were neighbors, he

hoped I wouldn't mind. He assured me he'd bring back my box, but I told him to keep it."

The inspector asked Grand if he'd noticed anything queer about Cottard.

"What struck me as queer was that he always seemed to want to start a

conversation. But he should have seen I was busy with my work." Grand turned to Rieux

and added rather shyly: "Some private work."

The inspector now said that he must see the invalid and hear what he had to say.

Rieux thought it would be wiser to prepare Cottard for the visit. When he entered

the bedroom he found Cottard, who was wearing a gray flannel nightshirt, sitting up in

bed and gazing at the door with a scared expression on his face.

"It's the police, isn't it?"

"Yes," Rieux said, "but don't get flustered. There are only some formalities to be

gone through, and then you'll be left in peace."

Cottard replied that all this was quite needless, to his thinking, and anyhow he

didn't like the police.

Rieux showed some irritation.

"I don't love them either. It's only a matter of answering a few questions as briefly

and correctly as you can, and then you'll be through with it."

Cottard said nothing and Rieux began to move to the door. He had hardly taken a

step when the little man called him back and, as soon as he was at the bedside, gripped

his hands.

"They can't be rough with an invalid, a man who's hanged himself, can they,

doctor?"

Rieux gazed down at him for a moment, then assured him that there was no

question of anything like that, and in any case he was here to protect his patient. This

seemed to relieve Cottard, and Rieux went out to get the inspector.

After Grand's deposition had been read out, Cottard was asked to state the exact

motive of his act. He merely replied, without looking at the police officer, that "a secret

grief" described it well enough. The inspector then asked him peremptorily if he intended

to "have another go at it." Showing more animation, Cottard said certainly not, his one

wish was to be left in peace.

"Allow me to point out, my man," the police officer rejoined with asperity, "that

just now it's you who're troubling the peace of others." Rieux signed to him not to

continue, and he left it at that.

"A good hour wasted!" the inspector sighed when the door closed behind them.

"As you can guess, we've other things to think about, what with this fever everybody's

talking of."

He then asked the doctor if there was any serious danger to the town; Rieux

answered that he couldn't say.

"It must be the weather," the police officer decided. "That's what it is."

No doubt it was the weather. As the day wore on, everything grew sticky to the

touch, and Rieux felt his anxiety increasing after each visit. That evening a neighbor of

his old patient in the suburbs started vomiting, pressing his hand to his groin, and running

a high fever accompanied by delirium. The ganglia were much bigger than M. Michel's.

One of them was beginning to suppurate, and presently split open like an overripe fruit.

On returning to his apartment, Rieux rang up the medical-stores depot for the district. In

his professional diary for the day the only entry was: "Negative reply." Already he was

receiving calls for similar cases from various parts of the town. Obviously the abscesses

had to be lanced. Two crisscross strokes, and the ganglion disgorged a mixture of blood

and pus. Their limbs stretched out as far as they could manage, the sick man went on

bleeding. Dark patches appeared on their legs and stomachs; sometimes a ganglion would

stop suppurating, then suddenly swell again. Usually the sick man died, in a stench of

corruption.

The local press, so lavish of news about the rats, now had nothing to say. For rats

died in the street; men in their homes. And newspapers are concerned only with the

street. Meanwhile, government and municipal officials were putting their heads together.

So long as each individual doctor had come across only two or three cases, no one had

thought of taking action. But it was merely a matter of adding up the figures and, once

this had been done, the total was startling.

In a very few days the number of cases had risen by leaps and bounds, and it

became evident to all observers of this strange malady that a real epidemic had set in.

This was the state of affairs when Castel, one of Rieux's colleagues and a much older

man than he, came to see him.

"Naturally," he said to Rieux, "you know what it is."

"I'm waiting for the result of the post-mortems."

"Well, I know. And I don't need any post-mortems. I was in China for a good part

of my career, and I saw some cases in Paris twenty years ago. Only no one dared to call

them by their name on that occasion. The usual taboo, of course; the public mustn't be

alarmed, that wouldn't do at all. And then, as one of my colleagues said, 'It's unthinkable.

Everyone knows it's ceased to appear in western Europe.' Yes, everyone knew that,

except the dead men. Come now, Rieux, you know as well as I do what it is."

Rieux pondered. He was looking out of the window of his surgery, at the tall cliff

that closed the half-circle of the bay on the far horizon. Though blue, the sky had a dull

sheen that was softening as the light declined.

"Yes, Castel," he replied. "It's hardly credible. But everything points to its being

plague."

Castel got up and began walking toward the door.

"You know," the old doctor said, "what they're going to tell us? That it vanished

from temperate countries long ago."

"'Vanished'? What does that word really mean?" Rieux shrugged his shoulders.

"Yes. And don't forget. Just under twenty years ago, in Paris too."

"Right. Let's hope it won't prove any worse this time than it did then. But really

it's incredible."

The word "plague" had just been uttered for the first time. At this stage of the

narrative, with Dr. Bernard Rieux standing at his window, the narrator may, perhaps, be

allowed to justify the doctor's uncertainty and surprise, since, with very slight differences,

his reaction was the same as that of the great majority of our townsfolk. Everybody

knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard

to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as

many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by

surprise.

In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his guard, and we should

understand his hesitations in the light of this fact; and similarly understand how he was

torn between conflicting fears and confidence. When a war breaks out, people say: "It's

too stupid; it can't last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't

prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were

not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves;

in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.

A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that

pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't

always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the

humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions.

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that

was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that

pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and

formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules

out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied

themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

Indeed, even after Dr. Rieux had admitted in his friend's company that a handful

of persons, scattered about the town, had without warning died of plague, the danger still

remained fantastically unreal. For the simple reason that, when a man is a doctor, he

comes to have his own ideas of physical suffering, and to acquire somewhat more

imagination than the average. Looking from his window at the town, outwardly quite

unchanged, the doctor felt little more than a faint qualm for the future, a vague unease.

He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his

memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had

accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths?

When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And

since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred

million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the

imagination. The doctor remembered the plague at Constantinople that, according to

Procopius, caused ten thousand deaths in a single day. Ten thousand dead made about

five times the audience in a biggish cinema. Yes, that was how it should be done. You

should collect the people at the exits of five picture-houses, you should lead them to a

city square and make them die in heaps if you wanted to get a clear notion of what it

means. Then at least you could add some familiar faces to the anonymous mass. But

naturally that was impossible to put into practice; moreover, what man knows ten

thousand faces? In any case the figures of those old historians, like Procopius, weren't to

be relied on; that was common knowledge. Seventy years ago, at Canton, forty thousand

rats died of plague before the disease spread to the inhabitants. But, again, in the Canton

epidemic there was no reliable way of counting up the rats. A very rough estimate was all

that could be made, with, obviously, a wide margin for error.

"Let's see," the doctor murmured to himself, "supposing the length of a rat to be

ten inches, forty thousand rats placed end to end would make a line of..."

He pulled himself up sharply. He was letting his imagination play pranks, the last

thing wanted just now. A few cases, he told himself, don't make an epidemic; they merely

call for serious precautions. He must fix his mind, first of all, on the observed facts:

stupor and extreme prostration, buboes, intense thirst, delirium, dark blotches on the

body, internal dilatation, and, in conclusion... In conclusion, some words came back to

the doctor's mind; aptly enough, the concluding sentence of the description of the

symptoms given in his medical handbook: "The pulse becomes fluttering, dicrotic, and

intermittent, and death ensues as the result of the slightest movement." Yes, in

conclusion, the patient's life hung on a thread, and three people out of four (he

remembered the exact figures) were too impatient not to make the very slight movement

that snapped the thread.

The doctor was still looking out of the window. Beyond it lay the tranquil

radiance of a cool spring sky; inside the room a word was echoing still, the word

"plague." A word that conjured up in the doctor's mind not only what science chose to put

into it, but a whole series of fantastic possibilities utterly out of keeping with that gray

and yellow town under his eyes, from which were rising the sounds of mild activity

characteristic of the hour; a drone rather than a bustling, the noises of a happy town, in

short, if it's possible to be at once so dull and happy. A tranquillity so casual and

thoughtless seemed almost effortlessly to give the lie to those old pictures of the plague:

Athens, a charnel-house reeking to heaven and deserted even by the birds; Chinese towns

cluttered up with victims silent in their agony; the convicts at Marseille piling rotting

corpses into pits; the building of the Great Wall in Provence to fend off the furious

plague-wind; the damp, putrefying pallets stuck to the mud floor at the Constantinople

lazar-house, where the patients were hauled up from their beds with hooks; the carnival

of masked doctors at the Black Death; men and women copulating in the cemeteries of

Milan; cartloads of dead bodies rumbling through London's ghoul-haunted darkness,

nights and days filled always, everywhere, with the eternal cry of human pain. No, all

those horrors were not near enough as yet even to ruffle the equanimity of that spring

afternoon. The clang of an unseen streetcar came through the window, briskly refuting

cruelty and pain. Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told

of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world. And, gazing in the direction

of the bay, Dr. Rieux called to mind the plague-fires of which Lucretius tells, which the

Athenians kindled on the seashore. The dead were brought there after nightfall, but there

was not room enough, and the living fought one another with torches for a space where to

lay those who had been dear to them; for they had rather engage in bloody conflicts than

abandon their dead to the waves. A picture rose before him of the red glow of the pyres

mirrored on a wine-dark, slumbrous sea, battling torches whirling sparks across the

darkness, and thick, fetid smoke rising toward the watchful sky. Yes, it was not beyond

the bounds of possibility

But these extravagant forebodings dwindled in the light of reason. True, the word

"plague" had been uttered; true, at this very moment one or two victims were being

seized and laid low by the disease. Still, that could stop, or be stopped. It was only a

matter of lucidly recognizing what had to be recognized; of dispelling extraneous

shadows and doing what needed to be done. Then the plague would come to an end,

because it was unthinkable, or, rather, because one thought of it on misleading lines. If, as

was most likely, it died out, all would be well. If not, one would know it anyhow for what

it was and what steps should be taken for coping with and finally overcoming it.

The doctor opened the window, and at once the noises of the town grew louder.

The brief, intermittent sibilance of a machine-saw came from a near-by workshop.

Rieux pulled himself together. There lay certitude; there, in the daily round.

All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste

your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done.

The doctor's musings had reached this point when the visit of Joseph Grand was

announced. Grand's duties as clerk in the Municipal Office were varied, and he was

sometimes employed in the statistical department on compiling the figures of births,

marriages, and deaths. Thus it had fallen to him to add up the number of deaths during

the last few days, and, being of an obliging disposition, he had volunteered to bring a

copy of the latest figures to the doctor.

Grand, who was waving a sheet of paper, was accompanied by his neighbor,

Cottard.

"The figures are going up, doctor. Eleven deaths in forty-eight hours."

Rieux shook hands with Cottard and asked him how he was feeling. Grand put in

a word explaining that Cottard was bent on thanking the doctor and apologizing for the

trouble he had given. But Rieux was gazing frowningly at the figures on the sheet of

paper.

"Well," he said, "perhaps we'd better make up our minds to call this disease by its

name. So far we've been only shillyshallying. Look here, I'm off to the laboratory; like to

come with me?"

"Quite so, quite so," Grand said as he went down the stairs at the doctor's heels.

"I, too, believe in calling things by their name. But what's the name in this case?"

"That I shan't say, and anyhow you wouldn't gain, anything by knowing."

"You see," Grand smiled. "It's not so easy after all!"

They started off toward the Place d'Armes. Cottard still kept silent. The streets

were beginning to fill up. The brief dusk of our town was already giving place to night,

and the first stars glimmered above the still clearly marked horizon. A few moments later

all the street-lamps went on, dimming the sky, and the voices in the street seemed to rise

a tone.

"Excuse me," Grand said at the corner of the Place d'Armes, "but I must catch my

car now. My evenings are sacred. As we say in my part of the world: 'Never put off to

tomorrow?'"

Rieux had already noticed Grand's trick of professing to quote some turn of

speech from "his part of the world" (he hailed from Montélimar), and following up with

some such hackneyed expression as "lost in dreams," or "pretty as a picture."

"That's so," Cottard put in. "You can never budge him from his den after dinner."

Rieux asked Grand if he was doing extra work for the municipality. Grand said

no, he was working on his own account.

"Really?" Rieux said, to keep the conversation going. "And are you getting on

well with it?"

"Considering I've been at it for years, it would be surprising if I wasn't.

Though in one sense there hasn't been much progress."

"May one know", the doctor halted, "what it is that you're engaged on?"

Grand put a hand up to his hat and tugged it down upon his big, protruding ears,

then murmured some half-inaudible remark from which Rieux seemed to gather that

Grand's work was connected with "the growth of a personality." Then he turned rather

hastily and a moment later was hurrying, with short, quick steps, under the fig trees lining

the boulevard de la Marne.

When they were at the laboratory gate, Cottard told the doctor that he would

greatly like to see him and ask his advice about something. Rieux, who was fingering in

his pocket the sheet of paper with the figures on it, said he'd better call during his

consulting-hours; then, changing his mind, told him he would be in his part of the town

next day and would drop in to see him at the end of the afternoon.

On leaving Cottard the doctor noticed that he was thinking of Grand, trying to

picture him in the midst of an outbreak of plague, not an outbreak like the present one,

which would probably not prove serious, but like one of the great visitations of the past.

"He's the kind of man who always escapes in such cases." Rieux remembered having read

somewhere that the plague spared weak constitutions and chose its victims chiefly among

the robust. Still thinking of Grand, he decided that he was something of a "mystery man"

in his small way.

True, at first sight, Grand manifested both the outward signs and typical manner

of a humble employee in the local administration. Tall and thin, he seemed lost in the

garments that he always chose a size too large, under the illusion that they would wear

longer. Though he still had most of the teeth in his lower jaw, all the upper ones were

gone, with the result that when he smiled, raising his upper lip, the lower scarcely moved,

his mouth looked like a small black hole let into his face. Also he had the walk of a shy

young priest, sidling along walls and slipping mouse-like into doorways, and he exuded a

faint odor of smoke and basement rooms; in short, he had all the attributes of

insignificance. Indeed, it cost an effort to picture him otherwise than bent over a desk,

studiously revising the tariff of the town baths or gathering for a junior secretary the

materials of a report on the new garbage-collection tax. Even before you knew what his

employment was, you had a feeling that he'd been brought into the world for the sole

purpose of performing the discreet but needful duties of a temporary assistant municipal

clerk on a salary of sixty-two francs, thirty centimes a day.

This was, in fact, the entry that he made each month in the staff register at the

Municipal Office, in the column Post in Which Employed. When twenty-two years

previously, after obtaining a matriculation certificate beyond which, for lack of money,

he was unable to progress, he was given this temporary post, he had been led to expect, or

so he said, speedy "confirmation" in it. It was only a matter of proving his ability to cope

with the delicate problems raised by the administration of our city. Once confirmed, they

had assured him, he couldn't fail to be promoted to a grade that would enable him to live

quite comfortably.

Ambition, certainly, was not the spur that activated Joseph Grand; that he would

swear to, wryly smiling. All he desired was the prospect of a life suitably insured on the

material side by honest work, enabling him to devote his leisure to his hobbies. If he'd

accepted the post offered him, it was from honorable motives and, if he might say so,

loyalty to an ideal.

But this "temporary" state of things had gone on and on, the cost of living rose by

leaps and bounds, and Grand's pay, in spite of some statutory rises, was still a mere

pittance. He had confided this to Rieux, but nobody else seemed aware of his position.

And here lies Grand's originality, or anyhow an indication of it. He could certainly have

brought to official notice, if not his rights, of which he wasn't sure, at least the promises

given him. But, for one thing, the departmental head who had made them had been dead

for some time and, furthermore, Grand no longer remembered their exact terms. And

lastly, this was the real trouble, Joseph Grand couldn't find his words.

This peculiarity, as Rieux had noticed, was really the key to the personality of our

worthy fellow citizen. And this it was which always prevented him from writing the

mildly protesting letter he had in mind, or taking the steps the situation called for.

According to him, he felt a particular aversion from talking about his "rights", the word

was one that gave him pause, and likewise from mentioning a "promise", which would

have implied that he was claiming his due and thus bespoken an audacity incompatible

with the humble post he filled.

On the other hand, he refused to use expressions such as "your kindness,"

"gratitude," or even "solicit," which, to his thinking, were incompatible with his personal

dignity. Thus, owing to his inability to find the right words, he had gone on performing

his obscure, ill-paid duties until a somewhat advanced age. Also this, anyhow, was what

he told Dr. Rieux he had come, after long experience, to realize that he could always

count on living within his means; all he had to do was to scale down his needs to his

income. Thus he confirmed the wisdom of an opinion often voiced by our mayor, a

business magnate of the town, when he insisted vehemently that in the last analysis (he

emphasized this choice expression, which indeed clinched his argument, there was no

reason to believe that anyone had ever died of hunger in the town. In any case, the

austere, not to say ascetic life of Joseph Grand was, in the last analysis, a guarantee

against any anxiety in this respect. He went on looking for his words.

In a certain sense it might well be said that his was an exemplary life. He was one

of those rare people, rare in our town as elsewhere, who have the courage of their good

feelings. What little he told of his personal life vouched for acts of kindness and a

capacity for affection that no one in our times dares own to. Without a blush he confessed

to dearly loving his nephews and sister, his only surviving near relation, whom he went to

France to visit every other year.

He admitted that the thought of his parents, whom he lost when he was very

young, often gave him a pang. He did not conceal the fact that he had a special affection

for a church bell in his part of the town which started pealing very melodiously at about

five every afternoon. Yet to express such emotions, simple as they were, the least word

cost him a terrible effort. And this difficulty in finding his words had come to be the bane

of his life. "Oh, doctor," he would exclaim, "how I'd like to learn to express myself!" He

brought the subject up each time he met Rieux.

That evening, as he watched Grand's receding form, it flashed on the doctor what

it was that Grand was trying to convey; he was evidently writing a book or something of

the sort. And quaintly enough, as he made his way to the laboratory, this thought

reassured him. He realized how absurd it was, but he simply couldn't believe that a

pestilence on the great scale could befall a town where people like Grand were to be

found, obscure functionaries cultivating harmless eccentricities. To be precise, he

couldn't picture such eccentricities existing in a plague-stricken community, and he

concluded that the chances were all against the plague's making any headway among our

fellow citizens.

NEXT day, by dint of a persistence that many thought ill-advised, Rieux persuaded the

authorities to convene a health committee at the Prefect's office.

"People in town are getting nervous, that's a fact," Dr. Richard admitted. "And of

course all sorts of wild rumors are going round. The Prefect said to me, 'Take prompt

action if you like, but don't attract attention.' He personally is convinced that it's a false

alarm."

Rieux gave Castel a lift to the Prefect's office.

"Do you know," Castel said when they were in the car, "that we haven't a gram of

serum in the whole district?"

"I know. I rang up the depot. The director seemed quite startled. It'll have to be

sent from Paris."

"Let's hope they're quick about it."

"I sent a wire yesterday," Rieux said.

The Prefect greeted them amiably enough, but one could see his nerves were on

edge.

"Let's make a start, gentlemen," he said. "Need I review the situation?"

Richard thought that wasn't necessary. He and his colleagues were acquainted

with the facts. The only question was what measures should be adopted.

"The question," old Castel cut in almost rudely, "is to know whether it's plague or

not."

Two or three of the doctors present protested. The others seemed to hesitate.

The Prefect gave a start and hurriedly glanced toward the door to make sure it had

prevented this outrageous remark from being overheard in the corridor Richard said that

in his opinion the great thing was not to take an alarmist view. All that could be said at

present was that we had to deal with a special type of fever, with inguinal complications;

in medical science, as in daily life, it was unwise to jump to conclusions. Old Castel, who

was placidly chewing his draggled yellow mustache, raised his pale, bright eyes and

gazed at Rieux.

Then, after sweeping the other members of the committee with a friendly glance,

he said that he knew quite well that it was plague and, needless to say, he also knew that,

were this to be officially admitted, the authorities would be compelled to take very drastic

steps. This was, of course, the explanation of his colleagues' reluctance to face the facts

and, if it would ease their minds, he was quite prepared to say it wasn't plague. The

Prefect seemed ruffled and remarked that, in any case, this line of argument seemed to

him unsound.

"The important thing," Castel replied, "isn't the soundness or otherwise of the

argument, but for it to make you think." Rieux, who had said nothing so far, was asked

for his opinion.

"We are dealing," he said, "with a fever of a typhoidal nature, accompanied by

vomiting and buboes. I have incised these buboes and had the pus analyzed; our

laboratory analyst believes he has identified the plague bacillus. But I am bound to add

that there are specific modifications that don't quite tally with the classical description of

the plague bacillus."

Richard pointed out that this justified a policy of wait-and-see; anyhow, it would

be wise to await the statistical report on the series of analyses that had been going on for

several days.

"When a microbe," Rieux said, "after a short intermission can quadruple in three

days' time the volume of the spleen, can swell the mesenteric ganglia to the size of an

orange and give them the consistency of gruel, a policy of wait-and-see is, to say the least

of it, unwise. The foci of infection are steadily extending. Judging by the rapidity with

which the disease is spreading, it may well, unless we can stop it, kill off half the town

before two months are out. That being so, it has small importance whether you call it

plague or some rare kind of fever. The important thing is to prevent its killing off half the

population of this town."

Richard said it was a mistake to paint too gloomy a picture, and, moreover, the

disease hadn't been proved to be contagious; indeed, relatives of his patients, living under

the same roof, had escaped it.

"But others have died," Rieux observed. "And obviously contagion is never

absolute; otherwise you'd have a constant mathematical progression and the death-rate

would rocket up catastrophically. It's not a question of painting too black a picture. It's a

question of taking precautions."

Richard, however, summing up the situation as he saw it, pointed out that, if the

epidemic did not cease spontaneously, it would be necessary to apply the rigorous

prophylactic measures laid down in the Code. And, to do this, it would be necessary to

admit officially that plague had broken out. But of this there was no absolute certainty;

therefore any hasty action was to be deprecated.

Rieux stuck to his guns. "The point isn't whether the measures provided for in the

Code are rigorous, but whether they are needful to prevent the death of half the

population. All the rest is a matter of administrative action, and I needn't remind you that

our constitution has provided for such emergencies by empowering prefects to issue the

necessary orders."

"Quite true," the Prefect assented, "but I shall need your professional declaration

that the epidemic is one of plague."

"If we don't make that declaration," Rieux said, "there's a risk that half the

population may be wiped out."

Richard cut in with some impatience.

"The truth is that our colleague is convinced it's plague; his description of the

syndrome proved it."

Rieux replied that he had not described a "syndrome," but merely what he'd seen

with his own eyes. And what he'd seen was buboes, and high fever accompanied by

delirium, ending fatally within forty-eight hours. Could Dr. Richard take the

responsibility of declaring that the epidemic would die out without the imposition of

rigorous prophylactic measures?

Richard hesitated, then fixed his eyes on Rieux.

"Please answer me quite frankly. Are you absolutely convinced it's plague?"

"You're stating the problem wrongly. It's not a question of the term I use; it's a

question of time."

"Your view, I take it," the Prefect put in, "is this. Even if it isn't plague, the

prophylactic measures enjoined by law for coping with a state of plague should be put

into force immediately?"

"If you insist on my having a View,' that conveys it accurately enough."

The doctors confabulated. Richard was their spokesman:

"It comes to this. We are to take the responsibility of acting as though the

epidemic were plague."

This way of putting it met with general approval.

"It doesn't matter to me," Rieux said, "how you phrase it. My point is that we

should not act as if there were no likelihood that half the population would be wiped out;

for then it would be."

Followed by scowls and protestations, Rieux left the committee-room. Some

minutes later, as he was driving down a back street redolent of fried fish and urine, a

woman screaming in agony, her groin dripping blood, stretched out her arms toward him.

ON the day after the committee meeting the fever notched another small advance.

It even found its way into the papers, but discreetly; only a few brief references to

it were made. On the following day, however, Rieux observed that small official notices

had been just put up about the town, though in places where they would not attract much

attention. It was hard to find in these notices any indication that the authorities were

facing the situation squarely.

The measures enjoined were far from Draconian and one had the feeling that

many concessions had been made to a desire not to alarm the public. The instructions

began with a bald statement that a few cases of a malignant fever had been reported in

Oran; it was not possible as yet to say if this fever was contagious. The symptoms were

not so marked as to be really perturbing and the authorities felt sure they could rely on

the townspeople to treat the situation with composure. None the less, guided by a spirit of

prudence that all would appreciate, the Prefect was putting into force some precautionary

measures. If these measures were carefully studied and properly applied, they would

obviate any risk of an epidemic. This being so, the Prefect felt no doubt that everybody in

his jurisdiction would wholeheartedly second his personal efforts.

The notice outlined the general program that the authorities had drawn up. It

included a systematic extermination of the rat population by injecting poison gas into the

sewers, and a strict supervision of the water-supply. The townspeople were advised to

practice extreme cleanliness, and any who found fleas on their persons were directed to

call at the municipal dispensaries. Also heads of households were ordered promptly to

report any fever case diagnosed by their doctors and to permit the isolation of sick

members of their families in special wards at the hospital. These wards, it was explained,

were equipped to provide patients with immediate treatment and ensure the maximum

prospect of recovery. Some supplementary regulations enjoined compulsory disinfection

of the sickroom and of the vehicle in which the patient traveled.

For the rest, the Prefect confined himself to advising all who had been in contact

with the patient to consult the sanitary inspector and strictly to follow his advice.

Dr. Rieux swung round brusquely from the poster and started back to his surgery.

Grand, who was awaiting him there, raised his arms dramatically when the doctor

entered.

"Yes," Rieux said, "I know. The figures are rising."

On the previous day ten deaths had been reported. The doctor told Grand that he

might be seeing him in the evening, as he had promised to visit Cottard.

"An excellent idea," Grand said. "You'll do him good. As a matter of fact, I find

him greatly changed."

"In what way?"

"He's become amiable."

"Wasn't he amiable before?"

Grand seemed at a loss. He couldn't say that Cottard used to be unamiable; the

term wouldn't have been correct. But Cottard was a silent, secretive man, with something

about him that made Grand think of a wild boar. His bedroom, meals at a cheap

restaurant, some rather mysterious comings and goings, these were the sum of Cottard's

days. He described himself as a traveling salesman in wines and spirits. Now and then he

was visited by two or three men, presumably customers.

Sometimes in the evening he would go to a movie across the way. In this

connection Grand mentioned a detail he had noticed, that Cottard seemed to have a

preference for gangster films. But the thing that had struck him most about the man was

his aloofness, not to say his mistrust of everyone he met.

And now, so Grand said, there had been a complete change.

"I don't quite know how to put it, but I must say I've an impression that he is

trying to make himself agreeable to all and sundry, to be in everybody's good books.

Nowadays he often talks to me, he suggests we should go out together, and I can't bring

myself to refuse. What's more, he interests me, and of course I saved his life."

Since his attempt at suicide Cottard had had no more visitors. In the streets, in

shops, he was always trying to strike up friendships. To the grocer he was all affability;

no one could take more pains than he to show his interest in the tobacconist's gossip.

"This particular tobacconist, a woman, by the way," Grand explained, "is a holy

terror. I told Cottard so, but he replied that I was prejudiced and she had plenty of good

points, only one had to find them out."

On two or three occasions Cottard had invited Grand to come with him to the

luxury restaurants and cafes of the town, which he had recently taken to patronizing.

"There's a pleasant atmosphere in them," he explained, "and then one's in good

company."

Grand noticed that the staff made much of Cottard and he soon discovered why,

when he saw the lavish tips his companion gave. The traveling salesman seemed greatly

to appreciate the amiability shown him in return for his largesse. One day when the head

waiter had escorted him to the door and helped him into his overcoat, Cottard said to

Grand:

"He's a nice fellow, and he'd make a good witness."

"A witness? I don't follow."

Cottard hesitated before answering.

"Well, he could say I'm not really a bad kind of man."

But his humor had its ups and downs. One day when the grocer had shown less

affability, he came home in a tearing rage.

"He's siding with the others, the swine!"

"With what others?"

"The whole damned lot of them."

Grand had personally witnessed an odd scene that took place at the tobacconist's.

An animated conversation was in progress and the woman behind the counter started

airing her views about a murder case that had created some stir in Algiers. A young

commercial employee had killed an Algerian on a beach.

"I always say," the woman began, "if they clapped all that scum in jail, decent

folks could breathe more freely."

She was too much startled by Cottard's reaction, he dashed out of the shop

without a word of excuse, to continue. Grand and the woman gazed after him,

dumbfounded.

Subsequently Grand reported to the doctor other changes in Cottard's character.

Cottard had always professed very liberal ideas, as his pet dictum on economic

questions, "Big fish eat little fish," implied. But now the only Oran newspaper he bought

was the conservative organ, and one could hardly help suspecting that he made a point of

reading it in public places. Somewhat of the same order was a request he made to Grand

shortly before he left his sick-bed; Grand mentioned he was going to the post office and

Cottard asked him to be kind enough to dispatch a money order for a hundred francs to a

sister living at a distance, mentioning that he sent her this sum every month. Then, just

when Grand was leaving the room, he called him back.

"No, send her two hundred francs. That'll be a nice surprise for her. She believes I

never give her a thought. But actually I'm devoted to her."

Not long after this he made some curious remarks to Grand in the course of

conversation. He had badgered Grand into telling him about the somewhat mysterious

"private work" to which Grand gave his evenings.

"I know!" Cottard exclaimed. "You're writing a book, aren't you?"

"Something of the kind. But it's not so simple as that."

"Ah!" Cottard sighed. "I only wish I had a knack for writing."

When Grand showed his surprise, Cottard explained with some embarrassment

that being a literary man must make things easier in lots of ways.

"Why?" Grand asked.

"Why, because an author has more rights than ordinary people, as everybody

knows. People will stand much more from him."

"It looks," said Rieux to Grand on the morning when the official notices were

posted, "as if this business of the rats had addled his brain, as it has done for so many

other people. That's all it is. Or perhaps he's scared of the 'fever.'"

"I doubt it, doctor. If you want to know my opinion, he?"

He paused; with a machine-gun rattle from its exhaust the "deratization" van was

clattering by. Rieux kept silent until it was possible to make himself audible, then asked,

without much interest, what Grand's opinion was.

"He's a man with something pretty serious on his conscience," Grand said gravely.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. As the inspector had said, he'd other fish to

fry.

That afternoon Rieux had another talk with Castel. The serum had not yet come.

"In any case," Rieux said, "I wonder if it will be much use. This bacillus is such a

queer one."

"There," Castel said, "I don't agree with you. These little brutes always have an air

of originality. But, at bottom, it's always the same thing."

"That's your theory, anyhow. Actually, of course, we know next to nothing on the

subject."

"I grant you, it's only my theory. Still, in a sense, that goes for everybody."

Throughout the day the doctor was conscious that the slightly dazed feeling that

came over him whenever he thought about the plague was growing more pronounced.

Finally he realized that he was afraid! On two occasions he entered crowded

cafes. Like Cottard he felt a need for friendly contacts, human warmth. A stupid instinct,

Rieux told himself; still, it served to remind him that he'd promised to visit the traveling

salesman.

Cottard was standing beside the dining-table when the doctor entered his room

that evening. A detective story lay open on the tablecloth. But the night was closing in

and it would have been difficult to read in the growing darkness.

Most likely Cottard had been sitting musing in the twilight until he heard the ring

at his door. Rieux asked how he was feeling. Cottard sat down and replied rather

grumpily that he was feeling tolerably well, adding that he'd feel still better if only he

could be sure of being left in peace. Rieux remarked that one couldn't always be alone.

"That's not what I meant. I was thinking of people who take an interest in you

only to make trouble for you." When Rieux said nothing, he went on: "Mind you, that's

not my case. Only I've been reading that detective story. It's about a poor devil who's

arrested one fine morning, all of a sudden. People had been taking an interest in him and

he knew nothing about it. They were talking about him in offices, entering his name on

card indexes. Now, do you think that's fair? Do you think people have a right to treat a

man like that?"

"Well," Rieux said, "that depends. In one sense I agree, nobody has the right.

But all that's beside the mark. What's important is for you to go out a bit.

It's a mistake staying indoors too much."

Cottard seemed vexed and said that on the contrary he was always going out, and,

if need arose, all the people in the street could vouch for him. What's more, he knew lots

of people in other parts of the town.

"Do you know Monsieur Rigaud, the architect? He's a friend of mine."

The room was in almost complete darkness. Outside, the street was growing

noisier and a sort of murmur of relief greeted the moment when all the street-lamps lit up,

all together. Rieux went out on the balcony, and Cottard followed him.

From the outlying districts, as happens every evening in our town, a gentle breeze

wafted a murmur of voices, smells of roasting meat, a gay, perfumed tide of freedom

sounding on its way, as the streets filled up with noisy young people released from shops

and offices. Nightfall, with its deep, remote baying of unseen ships, the rumor rising from

the sea, and the happy tumult of the crowd, that first hour of darkness which in the past

had always had a special charm for Rieux, seemed today charged with menace, because

of all he knew.

"How about turning on the lights?" he suggested when they went back into the

room.

After this had been done, the little man gazed at him, blinking his eyes.

"Tell me, doctor. Suppose I fell ill, would you put me in your ward at the

hospital?"

"Why not?"

Cottard then inquired if it ever happened that a person in a hospital or a nursing

home was arrested. Rieux said it had been known to happen, but all depended on the

invalid's condition.

"You know, doctor," Cottard said, "I've confidence in you." Then he asked the

doctor if he'd be kind enough to give him a lift, as he was going into town.

In the center of the town the streets were already growing less crowded and the

lights fewer. Children were playing in front of the doorways. At Cottard's request the

doctor stopped his car beside one of the groups of children. They were playing hopscotch

and making a great deal of noise. One of them, a boy with sleek, neatly parted hair and a

grubby face, stared hard at Rieux with bright, bold eyes. The doctor looked away.

Standing on the sidewalk Cottard shook his head. He then said in a hoarse, rather

labored voice, casting uneasy glances over his shoulder:

"Everybody's talking about an epidemic. Is there anything in it, doctor?"

"People always talk," Rieux replied. "That's only to be expected."

"You're right. And if we have ten deaths they'll think it's the end of the world. But

it's not that we need here."

The engine was ticking over. Rieux had his hand on the clutch. But he was

looking again at the boy who was still watching him with an oddly grave intentness.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, the child smiled, showing all his teeth.

"Yes? And what do we need here?" Rieux asked, returning the child's smile.

Abruptly Cottard gripped the door of the car and, as he turned to go, almost

shouted in a rageful, passionate voice:

"An earthquake! A big one!"

There was no earthquake, and the whole of the following day was spent, so far as

Rieux was concerned, in long drives to every corner of the town, in parleyings with the

families of the sick and arguments with the invalids themselves. Never had Rieux known

his profession to weigh on him so heavily. Hitherto his patients had helped to lighten his

task; they gladly put themselves into his hands. For the first time the doctor felt they were

keeping aloof, wrapping themselves up in their malady with a sort of bemused hostility. It

was a struggle to which he wasn't yet accustomed. And when, at ten that evening, he

parked his car outside the home of his old asthma patient, his last visit of the day, it was

an effort for Rieux to drag himself from his seat. For some moments he lingered, gazing

up the dark street, watching the stars appear and disappear in the blackness of the sky.

When Rieux entered the room, the old man was sitting up in bed, at his usual

occupation, counting out dried peas from one pan to another. On seeing his visitor he

looked up, beaming with delight.

"Well, doctor? It's cholera, isn't it?"

"Where on earth did you get that idea from?"

"It's in the paper, and the radio said it, too."

"No, it's not cholera."

"Anyhow," the old man chuckled excitedly, "the big bugs are laying it on thick.

Got the jitters, haven't they?"

"Don't you believe a word of it," the doctor said.

He had examined the old man and now was sitting in the middle of the dingy little

dining-room. Yes, despite what he had said, he was afraid. He knew that in this suburb

alone eight or ten unhappy people, cowering over their buboes, would be awaiting his

visit next morning. In only two or three cases had incision of the buboes caused any

improvement. For most of them it would mean going to the hospital, and he knew how

poor people feel about hospitals. "I don't want them trying their experiments on him," had

said the wife one of his patients. But he wouldn't be experimented on; he would die, that

was all. That the regulations now in force were inadequate was lamentably clear. As for

the "specially equipped" wards, he knew what they amounted to: two outbuildings from

which the other patients had been hastily evacuated, whose windows had been

hermetically sealed, and round which a sanitary cordon had been set. The only hope was

that the outbreak would die a natural death; it certainly wouldn't be arrested by the

measures the authorities had so far devised.

Nevertheless, that night the official communique was still optimistic. On the

following day Ransdoc announced that the rules laid down by the local administration

had won general approval and already thirty sick persons had reported. Castel rang up

Rieux.

"How many beds are there in the special wards?"

"Eighty."

"Surely there are far more than thirty cases in the town?"

"Don't forget there are two sorts of cases: those who take fright, and those, they're

the majority, who don't have time to do so."

"I see. Are they checking up on the burials?"

"No. I told Richard over the phone that energetic measures were needed, not just

words; we'd got to set up a real barrier against the disease, otherwise we might just as

well do nothing."

"Yes? And what did he say?"

"Nothing doing. He hadn't the powers. In my opinion, it's going to get worse."

That was so. Within three days both wards were full. According to Richard, there

was talk of requisitioning a school and opening an auxiliary hospital. Meanwhile Rieux

continued incising buboes and waiting for the anti-plague serum. Castel went back to his

old books and spent long hours in the public library.

"Those rats died of plague," was his conclusion, "or of something extremely like

it. And they've loosed on the town tens of thousands of fleas, which will spread the

infection in geometrical progression unless it's checked in time."

Rieux said nothing.

About this time the weather appeared set fair, and the sun had drawn up the last

puddles left by the recent rain. There was a serene blue sky flooded with golden light

each morning, with sometimes a drone of planes in the rising heat, all seemed well with

the world. And yet within four days the fever had made four startling strides: sixteen

deaths, twenty-four, twenty-eight, and thirty-two. On the fourth day the opening of the

auxiliary hospital in the premises of a primary school was officially announced. The local

population, who so far had made a point of masking their anxiety by facetious comments,

now seemed tongue-tied and went their ways with gloomy faces.

Rieux decided to ring up the Prefect.

"The regulations don't go anywhere near far enough."

"Yes," the Prefect replied. "I've seen the statistics and, as you say, they're most

perturbing."

"They're more than perturbing; they're conclusive."

"I'll ask government for orders."

When Rieux next met Castel, the Prefect's remark was still rankling.

"Orders!" he said scornfully. "When what's needed is imagination."

"Any news of the serum?"

"It'll come this week."

The Prefect sent instructions to Rieux, through Richard, asking him to draw up a

minute to be transmitted for orders to the central administration of the colony.

Rieux included in it a clinical diagnosis and statistics of the epidemic. On that day

forty deaths were reported. The Prefect took the responsibility, as he put it, of tightening

up the new regulations. Compulsory declaration of all cases of fever and their isolation

were to be strictly enforced. The residences of sick people were to be shut up and

disinfected; persons living in the same house were to go into quarantine; burials were to

be supervised by the local authorities in a manner which will be described later on. Next

day the serum arrived by plane. There was enough for immediate requirements, but not

enough if the epidemic were to spread. In reply to his telegram Rieux was informed that

the emergency reserve stock was exhausted, but that a new supply was in preparation.

Meanwhile, from all the outlying districts, spring was making its progress into the

town. Thousands of roses wilted in the flower-venders' baskets in the market-places and

along the streets, and the air was heavy with their cloying perfume. Outwardly, indeed,

this spring was like any other. The streetcars were always packed at the rush hours,

empty and untidy during the rest of the day. Tarrou watched the little old man, and the

little old man spat on the cats. Grand hurried home every evening to his mysterious

literary activities. Cottard went his usual desultory ways, and M. Othon, the magistrate,

continued to parade his menagerie.

The old Spaniard decanted his dried peas from pan to pan, and sometimes you

encountered Rambert, the journalist, looking interested as ever in all he saw.

In the evening the usual crowd thronged the streets and the lines lengthened

outside the picture-houses. Moreover, the epidemic seemed to be on the wane; on some

days only ten or so deaths were notified. Then, all of a sudden, the figure shot up again,

vertically. On the day when the death-roll touched thirty, Dr. Rieux read an official

telegram that the Prefect had just handed him, remarking:

"So they've got alarmed at last." The telegram ran: Proclaim a state of plague stop

close the town.

PART II

From now on, it can be said that plague was the concern of all of us. Hitherto, surprised

as he may have been by the strange things happening around him, each individual citizen

had gone about his business as usual, so far as this was possible. And no doubt he would

have continued doing so. But once the town gates were shut, every one of us realized that

all, the narrator included, were, so to speak, in the same boat, and each would have to

adapt himself to the new conditions of life. Thus, for example, a feeling normally as

individual as the ache of separation from those one loves suddenly became a feeling in

which all shared alike and, together with fear, the greatest affliction of the long period of

exile that lay ahead.

One of the most striking consequences of the closing of the gates was, in fact, this

sudden deprivation befalling people who were completely unprepared for it.

Mothers and children, lovers, husbands and wives, who had a few days previously

taken it for granted that their parting would be a short one, who had kissed one another

good-by on the platform and exchanged a few trivial remarks, sure as they were of seeing

one another again after a few days or, at most, a few weeks, duped by our blind human

faith in the near future and little if at all diverted from their normal interests by this leave-

taking, all these people found themselves, without the least warning, hopelessly cut off,

prevented from seeing one another again, or even communicating with one another. For

actually the closing of the gates took place some hours before the official order was made

known to the public, and, naturally enough, it was impossible to take individual cases of

hardship into account. It might indeed be said that the first effect of this brutal visitation

was to compel our townspeople to act as if they had no feelings as individuals.

During the first part of the day on which the prohibition to leave the town came

into force the Prefect's office was besieged by a crowd of applicants advancing pleas of

equal cogency but equally impossible to take into consideration.

Indeed, it needed several days for us to realize that we were completely cornered;

that words like "special arrangements," "favor," and "priority" had lost all effective

meaning.

Even the small satisfaction of writing letters was denied us. It came to this: not

only had the town ceased to be in touch with the rest of the world by normal means of

communication, but also, according to a second notification, all correspondence was

forbidden, to obviate the risk of letters carrying infection outside the town. In the early

days a favored few managed to persuade the sentries at the gates to allow them to get

messages through to the outside world. But that was only at the beginning of the

epidemic, when the sentries found it natural to obey their feelings of humanity. Later on,

when these same sentries had had the gravity of the situation drummed into them, they

flatly refused to take responsibilities whose possible after-effects they could not foresee.

At first, telephone calls to other towns were allowed, but this led to such crowding of the

telephone booths and delays on the lines that for some days they also were prohibited,

and thereafter limited to what were called "urgent cases," such as deaths, marriages, and

births. So we had to fall back on telegrams.

People linked together by friendship, affection, or physical love found themselves

reduced to hunting for tokens of their past communion within the compass of a ten-word

telegram. And since, in practice, the phrases one can use in a telegram are quickly

exhausted, long lives passed side by side, or passionate yearnings, soon declined to the

exchange of such trite formulas as: "Am well. Always thinking of you. Love."

Some few of us, however, persisted in writing letters and gave much time to

hatching plans for corresponding with the outside world; but almost always these plans

came to nothing. Even on the rare occasions when they succeeded, we could not know

this, since we received no answer. For weeks on end we were reduced to starting the

same letter over and over again recopying the same scraps of news and the same personal

appeals, with the result that after a certain time the living words, into which we had as it

were transfused our hearts' blood, were drained of any meaning. Thereafter we went on

copying them mechanically, trying, through the dead phrases, to convey some notion of

our ordeal. And in the long run, to these sterile, reiterated monologues, these futile

colloquies with a blank wall, even the banal formulas of a telegram came to seem

preferable.

Also, after some days, when it was clear that no one had the least hope of being

able to leave our town, inquiries began to be made whether the return of people who had

gone away before the outbreak would be permitted. After some days' consideration of the

matter the authorities replied affirmatively. They pointed out, however, that in no case

would persons who returned be allowed to leave the town again; once here, they would

have to stay, whatever happened. Some families, actually very few, refused to take the

position seriously and in their eagerness to have the absent members of the family with

them again, cast prudence to the winds and wired to them to take this opportunity of

returning. But very soon those who were prisoners of the plague realized the terrible

danger to which this would expose their relatives, and sadly resigned themselves to their

absence. At the height of the epidemic we saw only one case in which natural emotions

overcame the fear of death in a particularly painful form. It was not, as might be

expected, the case of two young people, whose passion made them yearn for each other's

nearness at whatever cost of pain. The two were old Dr. Castel and his wife, and they had

been married for very many years. Mme Castel had gone on a visit to a neighboring town

some days before the epidemic started. They weren't one of those exemplary married

couples of the Darby-and-Joan pattern; on the contrary, the narrator has grounds for

saying that, in all probability, neither partner felt quite sure the marriage was all that

could have been desired. But this ruthless, protracted separation enabled them to realize

that they could not live apart, and in the sudden glow of this discovery the risk of plague

seemed insignificant.

That was an exception. For most people it was obvious that the separation must

last until the end of the epidemic. And for every one of us the ruling emotion of his life,

which he had imagined he knew through and through (the people of Oran, as has been

said, have simple passions), took on a new aspect. Husbands who had had complete faith

in their wives found, to their surprise, that they were jealous; and lovers had the same

experience. Men who had pictured themselves as Don Juans became models of fidelity.

Sons who had lived beside their mothers hardly giving them a glance fell to picturing

with poignant regret each wrinkle in the absent face that memory cast upon the screen.

This drastic, clean-cut deprivation and our complete ignorance of what the future held in

store had taken us unawares; we were unable to react against the mute appeal of

presences, still so near and already so far, which haunted us daylong. In fact, our

suffering was twofold; our own to start with, and then the imagined suffering of the

absent one, son, mother, wife, or mistress.

Under other circumstances our townsfolk would probably have found an outlet in

increased activity, a more sociable life. But the plague forced inactivity on them, limiting

their movements to the same dull round inside the town, and throwing them, day after

day, on the illusive solace of their memories. For in their aimless walks they kept on

coming back to the same streets and usually, owing to the smallness of the town, these

were streets in which, in happier days, they had walked with those who now were absent.

Thus the first thing that plague brought to our town was exile. And the narrator is

convinced that he can set down here, as holding good for all, the feeling he personally

had and to which many of his friends confessed. It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile,

that sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to

the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung

like fire. Sometimes we toyed with our imagination, composing ourselves to wait for a

ring at the bell announcing somebody's return, or for the sound of a familiar footstep on

the stairs; but, though we might deliberately stay at home at the hour when a traveler

coming by the evening train would normally have arrived, and though we might contrive

to forget for the moment that no trains were running, that game of make-believe, for

obvious reasons, could not last. Always a moment came when we had to face the fact that

no trains were coming in. And then we realized that the separation was destined to

continue, we had no choice but to come to terms with the days ahead. In short, we

returned to our prison-house, we had nothing left us but the past, and even if some were

tempted to live in the future, they had speedily to abandon the idea anyhow, as soon as

could be, once they felt the wounds that the imagination inflicts on those who yield

themselves to it.

It is noteworthy that our townspeople very quickly desisted, even in public, from

a habit one might have expected them to form, that of trying to figure out the probable

duration of their exile. The reason was this: when the most pessimistic had fixed it at,

say, six months; when they had drunk in advance the dregs of bitterness of those six

black months, and painfully screwed up their courage to the sticking-place, straining all

their remaining energy to endure valiantly the long ordeal of all those weeks and days,

when they had done this, some friend they met, an article in a newspaper, a vague

suspicion, or a flash of foresight would suggest that, after all, there was no reason why

the epidemic shouldn't last more than six months; why not a year, or even more?

At such moments the collapse of their courage, willpower, and endurance was so

abrupt that they felt they could never drag themselves out of the pit of despond into

which they had fallen. Therefore they forced themselves never to think about the

problematic day of escape, to cease looking to the future, and always to keep, so to speak,

their eyes fixed on the ground at their feet. But, naturally enough, this prudence, this

habit of feinting with their predicament and refusing to put up a fight, was ill rewarded.

For, while averting that revulsion which they found so unbearable, they also deprived

themselves of those redeeming moments, frequent enough when all is told, when by

conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they could forget about the plague. Thus, in a

middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than

lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could

have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their

distress.

Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles,

which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose. Even the past, of

which they thought incessantly, had a savor only of regret. For they would have wished

to add to it all that they regretted having left undone, while they might yet have done it,

with the man or woman whose return they now awaited; just as in all the activities, even

the relatively happy ones, of their life as prisoners they kept vainly trying to include the

absent one. And thus there was always something missing in their lives. Hostile to the

past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future, we were much like those whom

men's justice, or hatred, forces to live behind prison bars. Thus the only way of escaping

from that intolerable leisure was to set the trains running again in one's imagination and

in filling the silence with the fancied tinkle of a doorbell, in practice obstinately mute.

Still, if it was an exile, it was, for most of us, exile in one's own home. And

though the narrator experienced only the common form of exile, he cannot forget the case

of those who, like Rambert the journalist and a good many others, had to endure an

aggravated deprivation, since, being travelers caught by the plague and forced to stay

where they were, they were cut off both from the person with whom they wanted to be

and from their homes as well. In the general exile they were the most exiled; since while

time gave rise for them, as for us all, to the suffering appropriate to it, there was also for

them the space factor; they were obsessed by it and at every moment knocked their heads

against the walls of this huge and alien lazar-house secluding them from their lost homes.

These were the people, no doubt, whom one often saw wandering forlornly in the dusty

town at all hours of the day, silently invoking nightfalls known to them alone and the

daysprings of their happier land. And they fed their despondency with fleeting

intimations, messages as disconcerting as a flight of swallows, a dew-fall at sundown, or

those queer glints the sun sometimes dapples on empty streets. As for that outside world,

which can always offer an escape from everything, they shut their eyes to it, bent as they

were on cherishing the all-too-real phantoms of their imagination and conjuring up with

all their might pictures of a land where a special play of light, two or three hills, a favorite

tree, a woman's smile, composed for them a world that nothing could replace.

To come at last, and more specifically, to the case of parted lovers, who present

the greatest interest and of whom the narrator is, perhaps, better qualified to speak, their

minds were the prey of different emotions, notably remorse. For their present position

enabled them to take stock of their feelings with a sort of feverish objectivity. And, in

these conditions, it was rare for them not to detect their own shortcomings. What first

brought these home to them was the trouble they experienced in summoning up any clear

picture of what the absent one was doing. They came to deplore their ignorance of the

way in which that person used to spend his or her days, and reproached themselves for

having troubled too little about this in the past, and for having affected to think that, for a

lover, the occupations of the loved one when they are not together could be a matter of

indifference and not a source of joy. Once this had been brought home to them, they

could retrace the course of their love and see where it had fallen short. In normal times all

of us know, whether consciously or not, that there is no love which can't be bettered;

nevertheless, we reconcile ourselves more or less easily to the fact that ours has never

risen above the average. But memory is less disposed to compromise. And, in a very

definite way, this misfortune which had come from outside and befallen a whole town did

more than inflict on us an unmerited distress with which we might well be indignant.

It also incited us to create our own suffering and thus to accept frustration as a

natural state. This was one of the tricks the pestilence had of diverting attention and

confounding issues.

Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast

indifference of the sky. This sense of being abandoned, which might in time have given

characters a finer temper, began, however, by sapping them to the point of futility. For

instance, some of our fellow citizens became subject to a curious kind of servitude, which

put them at the mercy of the sun and the rain.

Looking at them, you had an impression that for the first time in their lives they

were becoming, as some would say, weather-conscious. A burst of sunshine was enough

to make them seem delighted with the world, while rainy days gave a dark cast to their

faces and their mood. A few weeks before, they had been free of this absurd subservience

to the weather, because they had not to face life alone; the person they were living with

held, to some extent, the foreground of their little world. But from now on it was

different; they seemed at the mercy of the sky's caprices, in other words, suffered and

hoped irrationally.

Moreover, in this extremity of solitude none could count on any help from his

neighbor; each had to bear the load of his troubles alone. If, by some chance, one of us

tried to unburden himself or to say something about his feelings, the reply he got,

whatever it might be, usually wounded him. And then it dawned on him that he and the

man with him weren't talking about the same thing. For while he himself spoke from the

depths of long days of brooding upon his personal distress, and the image he had tried to

impart had been slowly shaped and proved in the fires of passion and regret, this meant

nothing to the man to whom he was speaking, who pictured a conventional emotion, a

grief that is traded on the market-place, mass-produced. Whether friendly or hostile, the

reply always missed fire, and the attempt to communicate had to be given up. This was

true of those at least for whom silence was unbearable, and since the others could not find

the truly expressive word, they resigned themselves to using the current coin of language,

the commonplaces of plain narrative, of anecdote, and of their daily paper. So in these

cases, too, even the sincerest grief had to make do with the set phrases of ordinary

conversation. Only on these terms could the prisoners of the plague ensure the sympathy

of their concierge and the interest of their hearers.

Nevertheless, and this point is most important, however bitter their distress and

however heavy their hearts, for all their emptiness, it can be truly said of these exiles that

in the early period of the plague they could account themselves privileged. For at the

precise moment when the residents of the town began to panic, their thoughts were

wholly fixed on the person whom they longed to meet again. The egoism of love made

them immune to the general distress and, if they thought of the plague, it was only in so

far as it might threaten to make their separation eternal. Thus in the very heart of the

epidemic they maintained a saving indifference, which one was tempted to take for

composure.

Their despair saved them from panic, thus their misfortune had a good side. For

instance, if it happened that one of them was carried off by the disease, it was almost

always without his having had time to realize it. Snatched suddenly from his long, silent

communion with a wraith of memory, he was plunged straightway into the densest

silence of all. He'd had no time for anything.

WHILE our townspeople were trying to come to terms with their sudden isolation, the

plague was posting sentries at the gates and turning away ships bound for Oran. No

vehicle had entered the town since the gates were closed. From that day onwards one had

the impression that all cars were moving in circles.

The harbor, too, presented a strange appearance to those who looked down on it

from the top of the boulevards. The commercial activity that hitherto made it one of the

chief ports on the coast had ceased abruptly. Only a few ships, detained in quarantine,

were anchored in the bay. But the gaunt, idle cranes on the wharves, tip-carts lying on

their sides, neglected heaps of sacks and barrels, all testified that commerce, too, had died

of plague.

In spite of such unusual sights our townsfolk apparently found it hard to grasp

what was happening to them. There were feelings all could share, such as fear and

separation, but personal interests, too, continued to occupy the foreground of their

thoughts. Nobody as yet had really acknowledged to himself what the disease connoted.

Most people were chiefly aware of what ruffled the normal tenor of their lives or affected

their interests. They were worried and irritated, but these are not feelings with which to

confront plague. Their first reaction, for instance, was to abuse the authorities. The

Prefect's riposte to criticisms echoed by the press. Could not the regulations be modified

and made less stringent? was somewhat unexpected. Hitherto neither the newspapers nor

the Ransdoc Information Bureau had been given any official statistics relating to the

epidemic. Now the Prefect supplied them daily to the bureau, with the request that they

should be broadcast once a week.

In this, too, the reaction of the public was slower than might have been expected.

Thus the bare statement that three hundred and two deaths had taken place in the third

week of plague failed to strike their imagination. For one thing, all the three hundred and

two deaths might not have been due to plague.

Also, no one in the town had any idea of the average weekly death-rate in

ordinary times. The population of the town was about two hundred thousand. There was

no knowing if the present death-rate were really so abnormal. This is, in fact, the kind of

statistics that nobody ever troubles much about, notwithstanding that its interest is

obvious. The public lacked, in short, standards of comparison. It was only as time passed

and the steady rise in the death-rate could not be ignored that public opinion became alive

to the truth. For in the fifth week there were three hundred and twenty-one deaths, and

three hundred and forty-five in the sixth. These figures, anyhow, spoke for themselves.

Yet they were still not sensational enough to prevent our townsfolk, perturbed though

they were, from persisting in the idea that what was happening was a sort of accident,

disagreeable enough, but certainly of a temporary order.

So they went on strolling about the town as usual and sitting at the tables on cafe

terraces. Generally speaking, they did not lack courage, bandied more jokes than

lamentations, and made a show of accepting cheerfully unpleasantnesses that obviously

could be only passing. In short, they kept up appearances. However, toward the end of

the month, about the time of the Week of Prayer which will be described later on, there

were more serious developments, altering the whole aspect of the town. To begin with,

the Prefect took measures controlling the traffic and the food-supply. Gasoline was

rationed and restrictions were placed on the sale of foodstuffs. Reductions were ordered

in the use of electricity.

Only necessaries were brought by road or air to Oran. Thus the traffic thinned out

progressively until hardly any private cars were on the roads; luxury shops closed

overnight, and others began to put up "Sold Out" notices, while crowds of buyers stood

waiting at their doors.

Oran assumed a novel appearance. You saw more pedestrians, and in the slack

hours numbers of people, reduced to idleness because shops and a good many offices

were closed, crowded the streets and cafes. For the present they were not unemployed;

merely on holiday. So it was that on fine days, toward three in the afternoon, Oran

brought to mind a city where public rejoicings are in progress, shops are shut, and traffic

is stopped to give a merry-making populace the freedom of the streets.

Naturally the picture-houses benefited by the situation and made money hand

over fist. They had one difficulty, however, to provide a change of program, since the

circulation of films in the region had been suspended. After a fortnight the various

cinemas were obliged to exchange films and, after a further lapse of time, to show always

the same program. In spite of this their takings did not fall off.

The cafes, thanks to the big stocks accumulated in a town where the wine-and-

liquor trade holds pride of place, were equally able to cater for their patrons. And, to tell

the truth, there was much heavy drinking. One of the cafes had the brilliant idea of

putting up a slogan: "The best protection against infection is a bottle of good wine,"

which confirmed an already prevalent opinion that alcohol is a safeguard against

infectious disease. Every night, toward two a.m., quite a number of drunken men, ejected

from the cafes, staggered down the streets, vociferating optimism.

Yet all these changes were, in one sense, so fantastic and had been made so

precipitately that it wasn't easy to regard them as likely to have any permanence. With the

result that we went on focusing our attention on our personal feelings.

When leaving the hospital two days after the gates were closed, Dr. Rieux met

Cottard in the street. The little man was beaming with satisfaction. Rieux congratulated

him on his appearance.

"Yes," Cottard said, "I'm feeling very fit. Never was fitter in my life. But tell me,

doctor. This blasted plague, what about it? Getting to look mighty serious, isn't it?" When

the doctor nodded, he continued exuberantly: "And there's no reason for it to stop now.

This town's going to be in an unholy mess, by the look of things."

They walked a little way together. Cottard told the story of a grocer in his street

who had laid by masses of canned provisions with the idea of selling them later on at a

big profit. When the ambulance men came to fetch him he had several dozen cans of

meat under his bed.

"He died in the hospital. There's no money in plague, that's sure." Cottard was a

mine of stories of this kind, true or false, about the epidemic. One of them was about a

man with all the symptoms and running a high fever who dashed out into the street, flung

himself on the first woman he met, and embraced her, yelling that he'd "got it."

"Good for him!" was Cottard's comment. But his next remark seemed to belie his

gleeful exclamation. "Anyhow, we'll all be nuts before long, unless I'm much mistaken."

It was on the afternoon of the same day that Grand at last unburdened himself to

Rieux. Noticing Mme Rieux's photograph on the desk, he looked at the doctor

inquiringly. Rieux told him that his wife was under treatment in a sanatorium some

distance from the town. "In one way," Grand said, "that's lucky." The doctor agreed that it

was lucky in a sense; but, he added, the great thing was that his wife should recover.

"Yes," Grand said, "I understand."

And then, for the first time since Rieux had made his acquaintance, he became

quite voluble. Though he still had trouble over his words he succeeded nearly always in

finding them; indeed, it was as if for years he'd been thinking over what he now said.

When in his teens, he had married a very young girl, one of a poor family living

near by. It was, in fact, in order to marry that he'd abandoned his studies and taken up his

present job. Neither he nor Jeanne ever stirred from their part of the town. In his courting

days he used to go to see her at her home, and the family were inclined to make fun of

her bashful, silent admirer. Her father was a railroadman. When off duty, he spent most

of the time seated in a corner beside the window gazing meditatively at the passers-by,

his enormous hands splayed out on his thighs. His wife was always busy with domestic

duties, in which Jeanne gave her a hand. Jeanne was so tiny that it always made Grand

nervous to see her crossing a street, the vehicles bearing down on her looked so gigantic.

Then one day shortly before Christmas they went out for a short walk together and

stopped to admire a gaily decorated shop-window. After gazing ecstatically at it for some

moments, Jeanne turned to him. "Oh, isn't it lovely!" He squeezed her wrist. It was thus

that the marriage had come about.

The rest of the story, to Grand's thinking, was very simple. The common lot of

married couples. You get married, you go on loving a bit longer, you work. And you

work so hard that it makes you forget to love. As the head of the office where Grand was

employed hadn't kept his promise, Jeanne, too, had to work outside. At this point a little

imagination was needed to grasp what Grand was trying to convey. Owing largely to

fatigue, he gradually lost grip of himself, had less and less to say, and failed to keep alive

the feeling in his wife that she was loved. An overworked husband, poverty, the gradual

loss of hope in a better future, silent evenings at home, what chance had any passion of

surviving such conditions? Probably Jeanne had suffered. And yet she'd stayed; of course

one may often suffer a long time without knowing it. Thus years went by. Then, one day,

she left him. Naturally she hadn't gone alone. "I was very fond of you, but now I'm so

tired. I'm not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start." That, more or

less, was what she'd said in her letter.

Grand, too, had suffered. And he, too, might, as Rieux pointed out, have made a

fresh start. But no, he had lost faith. Only, he couldn't stop thinking about her. What he'd

have liked to do was to write her a letter justifying himself.

"But it's not easy," he told Rieux. "I've been thinking it over for years. While we

loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. But people don't

love forever. A time came when I should have found the words to keep her with me, only

I couldn't." Grand produced from his pocket something that looked like a check duster

and blew his nose noisily. Then he wiped his mustache. Rieux gazed at him in silence.

"Forgive me, doctor," Grand added hastily, "but how shall I put it? I feel you're to be

trusted. That's why I can talk to you about these things. And then, you see, I get all

worked up."

Obviously Grand's thoughts were leagues away from the plague.

That evening Rieux sent a telegram to his wife telling her that the town was

closed, that she must go on taking great care of herself, and that she was in his thoughts.

One evening when he was leaving the hospital, it was about three weeks after the

closing of the gates, Rieux found a young man waiting for him in the street.

"You remember me, don't you?"

Rieux believed he did, but couldn't quite place him.

"I called on you just before this trouble started," the young man said, "for

information about the living-conditions in the Arab quarter. My name is Raymond

Rambert."

"Ah yes, of course. Well, you've now the makings of a good story for your paper."

Rambert, who gave the impression of being much less self-assured than he had

seemed on the first occasion when they met, said it wasn't that he'd come about.

He wanted to know if the doctor would kindly give him some help.

"I must apologize," he continued, "but really I don't know a soul here, and the

local representative of my paper is a complete dud."

Rieux said he had to go to a dispensary in the center of the town and suggested

they should walk there together. Their way lay through the narrow streets of the Negro

district. Evening was coming on, but the town, once so noisy at this hour, was strangely

still. The only sounds were some bugle-calls echoing through the air, still golden with the

end of daylight; the army, anyhow, was making a show of carrying on as usual.

Meanwhile, as they walked down the steep little streets flanked by blue, mauve, and

saffron-yellow walls, Rambert talked incessantly, as if his nerves were out of hand.

He had left his wife in Paris, he said. Well, she wasn't actually his wife, but it

came to the same thing. The moment the town was put into quarantine he had sent her a

wire. His impression then was that this state of things was quite temporary, and all he'd

tried to do was to get a letter through to her. But the post-office officials had vetoed this,

his colleagues of the local press said they could do nothing for him, and a clerk in the

Prefect's office had laughed in his face. It was only after waiting in line for a couple of

hours that he had managed to get a telegram accepted: All goes well. Hope to see you

soon.

But next morning, when he woke up, it had dawned on him that, after all, there

was absolutely no knowing how long this business was going to last. So he'd decided to

leave the town at once. Being able, thanks to his professional status, to pull some strings,

he had secured an interview with a high official in the Prefect's office. He had explained

that his presence in Oran was purely accidental, he had no connection with the town and

no reasons for staying in it; that being so, he surely was entitled to leave, even if, once

outside the town, he had to undergo a spell of quarantine. The official told him he quite

appreciated his position, but no exceptions could be made. He would, however, see if

anything could be done, though he could hold out little hope of a quick decision, as the

authorities were taking a very serious view of the situation.

"But, confound it," Rambert exclaimed, "I don't belong here!"

"Quite so. Anyhow, let's hope the epidemic will soon be over." Finally, he had

tried to console Rambert by pointing out that, as a journalist, he had an excellent subject

to his hand in Oran; indeed, when one came to think of it, no event, however disagreeable

in some ways, but had its bright side. Whereat Rambert had shrugged his shoulders

petulantly and walked out.

They had come to the center of the town.

"It's so damn silly, doctor, isn't it? The truth is I wasn't brought into the world to

write newspaper articles. But it's quite likely I was brought into the world to live with a

woman. That's reasonable enough, isn't it?"

Rieux replied cautiously that there might be something in what he said.

The central boulevards were not so crowded as usual. The few people about were

hurrying to distant homes. Not a smile was to be seen on any face. Rieux guessed that

this was a result of the latest Ransdoc announcement. After twenty-four hours our

townspeople would begin to hope again. But on the days when they were announced, the

statistics were too fresh in everybody's memory.

"The truth," Rambert remarked abruptly, "is that she and I have been together

only a short time, and we suit each other perfectly." When Rieux said nothing, he

continued: "I can see I'm boring you. Sorry. All I wanted to know was whether you

couldn't possibly give me a certificate stating that I haven't got this damned disease. It

might make things easier, I think."

Rieux nodded. A small boy had just run against his legs and fallen; he set him on

his feet again. Walking on, they came to the Place d'Armes. Gray with dust, the palms

and fig trees drooped despondently around a statue of the Republic, which too was coated

with grime and dust. They stopped beside the statue. Rieux stamped his feet on the

flagstones to shake off the coat of white dust that had gathered on them. His hat pushed

slightly back, his shirt-collar gaping under a loosely knotted tie, his cheeks ill-shaven, the

journalist had the sulky, stubborn look of a young man who feels himself deeply injured.

"Please don't doubt I understand you," Rieux said, "but you must see your

argument doesn't hold water. I can't give you that certificate because I don't know

whether you have the disease or not, and even if I did, how could I certify that between

the moment of leaving my consulting-room and your arrival at the Prefect's office you

wouldn't be infected? And even if I did?"

"And even if you did?"

"Even if I gave you a certificate, it wouldn't help."

"Why not?"

"Because there are thousands of people placed as you are in this town, and there

can't be any question of allowing them to leave it."

"Even supposing they haven't got plague?"

"That's not a sufficient reason. Oh, I know it's an absurd situation, but we're all

involved in it, and we've got to accept it as it is."

"But I don't belong here."

"Unfortunately, from now on you'll belong here, like everybody else."

Rambert raised his voice a little.

"But, damn it, doctor, can't you see it's a matter of common human feeling? Or

don't you realize what this sort of separation means to people who are fond of each

other?"

Rieux was silent for a moment, then said he understood it perfectly. He wished

nothing better than that Rambert should be allowed to return to his wife and that all who

loved one another and were parted should come together again. Only the law was the law,

plague had broken out, and he could only do what had to be done.

"No," Rambert said bitterly, "you can't understand. You're using the language of

reason, not of the heart; you live in a world of abstractions."

The doctor glanced up at the statue of the Republic, then said he did not know if

he was using the language of reason, but he knew he was using the language of the facts

as everybody could see them, which wasn't necessarily the same thing.

The journalist tugged at his tie to straighten it.

"So, I take it, I can't count on help from you. Very good. But" his tone was

challenging "leave this town I shall."

The doctor repeated that he quite understood, but all that was none of his

business.

"Excuse me, but it is your business." Rambert raised his voice again. "I

approached you because I'd been told you played a large part in drawing up the orders

that have been issued. So I thought that in one case anyhow you could unmake what

you'd helped to make. But you don't care; you never gave a thought to anybody, you

didn't take the case of people who are separated into account."

Rieux admitted this was true up to a point; he'd preferred not to take such cases

into account.

"Ah, I see now!" Rambert exclaimed. "You'll soon be talking about the interests

of the general public. But public welfare is merely the sum total of the private welfares of

each of us."

The doctor seemed abruptly to come out of a dream.

"Oh, come!" he said. "There's that, but there's much more to it than that. It doesn't

do to rush to conclusions, you know. But you've no reason to feel angered. I assure you

that if you find a way out of your quandary, I shall be extremely pleased. Only, there are

things that my official position debars me from doing."

Rambert tossed his head petulantly.

"Yes, yes, I was wrong to show annoyance. And I've taken up too much of your

time already."

Rieux asked him to let him know how he got on with his project, and not to bear

him a grudge for not having been more amenable. He was sure, he added, that there was

some common ground on which they could meet. Rambert looked perplexed.

Then, "Yes," he said after a short silence, "I rather think so, too, in spite of

myself, and of all you've just been saying." He paused. "Still, I can't agree with you."

Pulling down his hat over his eyes, he walked quickly away. Rieux saw him enter

the hotel where Tarrou was staying.

After a moment the doctor gave a slight nod, as if approving of some thought that

had crossed his mind. Yes, the journalist was right in refusing to be balked of happiness.

But was he right in reproaching him, Rieux, with living in a world of abstractions? Could

that term "abstraction" really apply to these days he spent in his hospital while the plague

was battening on the town, raising its death-toll to five hundred victims a week? Yes, an

element of abstraction, of a divorce from reality, entered into such calamities. Still when

abstraction sets to killing you, you've got to get busy with it. And so much Rieux knew:

that this wasn't the easiest course. Running this auxiliary hospital, for instance, of which

he was in charge' there were now three such hospitals, was no light task.

He had had an anteroom, leading into his surgery, installed, equipped for dealing

with patients on arrival. The floor had been excavated and replaced by a shallow lake of

water and cresylic acid, in the center of which was a sort of island made of bricks. The

patient was carried to the island, rapidly undressed, and his clothes dropped into the

disinfectant water. After being washed, dried, and dressed in one of the coarse hospital

nightshirts, he was taken to Rieux for examination, then carried to one of the wards. This

hospital, a requisitioned schoolhouse, now contained five hundred beds, almost all of

which were occupied.

After the reception of the patients, which he personally supervised, Rieux injected

serum, lanced buboes, checked the statistics again, and returned for his afternoon

consultations. Only when night was setting in did he start on his round of visits, and he

never got home till a very late hour. On the previous night his mother, when handing him

a telegram from his wife, had remarked that his hands were shaking.

"Yes," he said. "But it's only a matter of sticking to it, and my nerves will steady

down, you'll see."

He had a robust constitution and, as yet, wasn't really tired. Still his visits, for one

thing, were beginning to put a great strain on his endurance. Once the epidemic was

diagnosed, the patient had to be evacuated forthwith. Then indeed began "abstraction"

and a tussle with the family, who knew they would not see the sick man again until he

was dead or cured. "Have some pity, doctor!" It was Mme Loret, mother of the

chambermaid at Tarrou's hotel, who made the appeal. An unnecessary appeal; of course

he had pity. But what purpose could it serve? He had to telephone, and soon the

ambulance could be heard clanging down the street. (At first the neighbors used to open

windows and watch. Later they promptly shut them.) Then came a second phase of

conflict, tears and pleadings, abstraction, in a word. In those fever-hot, nerve-ridden

sickrooms crazy scenes took place.

But the issue was always the same. The patient was removed. Then Rieux, too,

could leave.

In the early days he had merely telephoned, then rushed off to see other patients,

without waiting for the ambulance. But no sooner was he gone than the family locked and

barred their doors, preferring contact with the plague to a parting whose issue they now

knew only too well. There followed objurgations, screams, batterings on the door, action

by the police, and later armed force; the patient was taken by storm. Thus during the first

few weeks Rieux was compelled to stay with the patient till the ambulance came. Later,

when each doctor was accompanied by a volunteer police officer, Rieux could hurry

away to the next patient. But, to begin with, every evening was like that evening when he

was called in for Mme Loret's daughter. He was shown into a small apartment decorated

with fans and artificial flowers. The mother greeted him with a faltering smile.

"Oh, I do hope it's not the fever everyone's talking about."

Lifting the coverlet and chemise, he gazed in silence at the red blotches on the

girl's thighs and stomach, the swollen ganglia. After one glance the mother broke into

shrill, uncontrollable cries of grief. And every evening mothers wailed thus, with a

distraught abstraction, as their eyes fell on those fatal stigmata on limbs and bellies; every

evening hands gripped Rieux's arms, there was a rush of useless words, promises, and

tears; every evening the nearing tocsin of the ambulance provoked scenes as vain as

every form of grief. Rieux had nothing to look forward to but a long sequence of such

scenes, renewed again and again. Yes, plague, like abstraction, was monotonous; perhaps

only one factor changed, and that was Rieux himself. Standing at the foot of the statue of

the Republic that evening, he felt it; all he was conscious of was a bleak indifference

steadily gaining on him as he gazed at the door of the hotel Rambert had just entered.

After these wearing weeks, after all those nightfalls when the townsfolk poured

into the streets to roam them aimlessly, Rieux had learned that he need no longer steel

himself against pity. One grows out of pity when it's useless. And in this feeling that his

heart had slowly closed in on itself, the doctor found a solace, his only solace, for the

almost unendurable burden of his days. This, he knew, would make his task easier, and

therefore he was glad of it. When he came home at two in the morning and his mother

was shocked at the blank look he gave her, she was deploring precisely the sole

alleviation Rieux could then experience. To fight abstraction you must have something of

it in your own make-up.

But how could Rambert be expected to grasp that? Abstraction for him was all

that stood in the way of his happiness. Indeed, Rieux had to admit the journalist was

right, in one sense. But he knew, too, that abstraction sometimes proves itself stronger

than happiness; and then, if only then, it has to be taken into account. And this was what

was going to happen to Rambert, as the doctor was to learn when, much later, Rambert

told him more about himself. Thus he was enabled to follow, and on a different plane, the

dreary struggle in progress between each man's happiness and the abstractions of the

plague, which constituted the whole life of our town over a long period of time.

BUT where some saw abstraction others saw the truth. The first month of the plague

ended gloomily, with a violent recrudescence of the epidemic and a dramatic sermon

preached by Father Paneloux, the Jesuit priest who had given an arm to old Michel when

he was tottering home at the start of his illness. Father Paneloux had already made his

mark with frequent contributions to the Oran Geographical Society; these dealt chiefly

with ancient inscriptions, on which he was an authority. But he had also reached a wider,

non-specialist public with a series of lectures on present-day individualism. In these he

had shown himself a stalwart champion of Christian doctrine at its most precise and

purest, equally remote from modern laxity and the obscurantism of the past. On these

occasions he had not shrunk from trouncing his hearers with some vigorous home-truths.

Hence his local celebrity.

Toward the end of the month the ecclesiastical authorities in our town resolved to

do battle against the plague with the weapons appropriate to them, and organized a Week

of Prayer. These manifestations of public piety were to be concluded on Sunday by a

High Mass celebrated under the auspices of St. Roch, the plague-stricken saint, and

Father Paneloux was asked to preach the sermon. For a fortnight he desisted from the

research work on St. Augustine and the African Church that had won for him a high place

in his Order. A man of a passionate, fiery temperament, he flung himself wholeheartedly

into the task assigned him. The sermon was a topic of conversation long before it was

delivered and, in its way, it marks an important date in the history of the period.

There were large attendances at the services of the Week of Prayer. It must not,

however, be assumed that in normal times the townsfolk of Oran are particularly devout.

On Sunday mornings, for instance, sea-bathing competes seriously with churchgoing.

Nor must it be thought that they had seen a great light and had a sudden change of heart.

But, for one thing, now that the town was closed and the harbor out of bounds, there was

no question of bathing; moreover, they were in a quite exceptional frame of mind and,

though in their heart of hearts they were far from recognizing the enormity of what had

come on them, they couldn't help feeling, for obvious reasons, that decidedly something

had changed.

Nevertheless, many continued hoping that the epidemic would soon die out and

they and their families be spared. Thus they felt under no obligation to make any change

in their habits as yet. Plague was for them an unwelcome visitant, bound to take its leave

one day as unexpectedly as it had come. Alarmed, but far from desperate, they hadn't yet

reached the phase when plague would seem to them the very tissue of their existence;

when they forgot the lives that until now it had been given them to lead. In short, they

were waiting for the turn of events.

With regard to religion, as to many other problems, plague had induced in them a

curious frame of mind, as remote from indifference as from fervor; the best name to give

it, perhaps, might be "objectivity." Most of those who took part in the Week of Prayer

would have echoed a remark made by one of the churchgoers in Dr. Rieux's hearing:

"Anyhow, it can't do any harm." Even Tarrou, after recording in his notebook that in such

cases the Chinese fall to playing tambourines before the Genius of Plague, observed that

there was no means of telling whether, in practice, tambourines proved more efficacious

than prophylactic measures. He merely added that, to decide the point, we should need

first to ascertain if a Genius of Plague actually existed, and our ignorance on this point

nullified any opinions we might form.

In any case the Cathedral was practically always full of worshippers throughout

the Week of Prayer. For the first two or three days many stayed outside, under the palms

and pomegranate trees in the garden in front of the porch, and listened from a distance to

the swelling tide of prayers and invocations whose backwash filled the neighboring

streets. But once an example had been given, they began to enter the Cathedral and join

timidly in the responses. And on the Sunday of the sermon a huge congregation filled the

nave, overflowing on to the steps and precincts. The sky had clouded up on the previous

day, and now it was raining heavily. Those in the open unfurled umbrellas. The air inside

the Cathedral was heavy with fumes of incense and the smell of wet clothes when Father

Paneloux stepped into the pulpit.

He was a stockily built man, of medium height. When he leaned on the edge of

the pulpit, grasping the woodwork with his big hands, all one saw was a black, massive

torso and, above it, two rosy cheeks overhung by steel-rimmed spectacles. He had a

powerful, rather emotional delivery, which carried to a great distance, and when he

launched at the congregation his opening phrase in clear, emphatic tones: "Calamity has

come on you, my brethren, and, my brethren, you deserved it" there was a flutter that

extended to the crowd massed in the rain outside the porch.

In strict logic what came next did not seem to follow from this dramatic opening.

Only as the sermon proceeded did it become apparent to the congregation that, by a

skillful oratorical device, Father Paneloux had launched at them, like a fisticuff, the gist

of his whole discourse. After launching it he went on at once to quote a text from Exodus

relating to the plague of Egypt, and said:

"The first time this scourge appears in history, it was wielded to strike down the

enemies of God. Pharaoh set himself up against the divine will, and the plague beat him

to his knees. Thus from the dawn of recorded history the scourge of God has humbled the

proud of heart and laid low those who hardened themselves against Him. Ponder this

well, my friends, and fall on your knees."

The downpour had increased in violence, and these words, striking through a

silence intensified by the drumming of raindrops on the chancel windows, carried such

conviction that, after a momentary hesitation, some of the worshippers slipped forward

from their seats on to their knees. Others felt it right to follow their example, and the

movement gradually spread until presently everyone was kneeling, from end to end of the

cathedral. No sound, except an occasional creak of chairs, accompanied the movement.

Then Paneloux drew himself up to his full height, took a deep breath, and continued his

sermon in a voice that gathered strength as it proceeded.

"If today the plague is in your midst, that is because the hour has struck for taking

thought. The just man need have no fear, but the evildoer has good cause to tremble. For

plague is the flail of God and the world His threshing-floor, and implacably He will

thresh out His harvest until the wheat is separated from the chaff. There will be more

chaff than wheat, few chosen of the many called.

Yet this calamity was not willed by God. Too long this world of ours has

connived at evil, too long has it counted on the divine mercy, on God's forgiveness.

Repentance was enough, men thought; nothing was forbidden. Everyone felt comfortably

assured; when the day came, he would surely turn from his sins and repent. Pending that

day, the easiest course was to surrender all along the line; divine compassion would do

the rest. For a long while God gazed down on this town with eyes of compassion; but He

grew weary of waiting, His eternal hope was too long deferred, and now He has turned

His face away from us. And so, God's light withdrawn, we walk in darkness, in the thick

darkness of this plague."

Someone in the congregation gave a little snort, like that of a restive horse.

After a short silence the preacher continued in a lower tone.

"We read in the Golden Legend that in the time of King Umberto Italy was swept

by plague and its greatest ravages took place in Rome and Pavia. So dreadful were these

that the living hardly sufficed to bury the dead. And a good angel was made visible to

human eyes, giving his orders to an evil angel who bore a great hunting-spear, and

bidding him strike the houses; and as many strokes as he dealt a house, so many dead

were carried out of it."

Here Paneloux stretched forth his two short arms toward the open porch, as if

pointing to something behind the tumbling curtain of the rain.

"My brothers," he cried, "that fatal hunt is up, and harrying our streets today.

See him there, that angel of the pestilence, comely as Lucifer, shining like Evil's

very self! He is hovering above your roofs with his great spear in his right hand, poised to

strike, while his left hand is stretched toward one or other of your houses. Maybe at this

very moment his finger is pointing to your door, the red spear crashing on its panels, and

even now the plague is entering your home and settling down in your bedroom to await

your return. Patient and watchful, ineluctable as the order of the scheme of things, it bides

its time. No earthly power, nay, not even, mark me well, the vaunted might of human

science can avail you to avert that hand once it is stretched toward you. And winnowed

like corn on the blood-stained threshing-floor of suffering, you will be cast away with the

chaff."

At this point the Father reverted with heightened eloquence to the symbol of the

flail. He bade his hearers picture a huge wooden bar whirling above the town, striking at

random, swinging up again in a shower of drops of blood, and spreading carnage and

suffering on earth, "for the seedtime that shall prepare the harvest of the truth."

At the end of his long phrase Father Paneloux paused; his hair was straggling over

his forehead, his body shaken by tremors that his hands communicated to the pulpit.

When he spoke again, his voice was lower, but vibrant with accusation.

"Yes, the hour has come for serious thought. You fondly imagined it was enough

to visit God on Sundays, and thus you could make free of your weekdays. You believed

some brief formalities, some bendings of the knee, would recompense Him well enough

for your criminal indifference. But God is not mocked. These brief encounters could not

sate the fierce hunger of His love. He wished to see you longer and more often; that is

His manner of loving and, indeed, it is the only manner of loving. And this is why,

wearied of waiting for you to come to Him, He loosed on you this visitation; as He has

visited all the cities that offended against Him since the dawn of history. Now you are

learning your lesson, the lesson that was learned by Cain and his offspring, by the people

of Sodom and Gomorrah, by Job and Pharaoh, by all that hardened their hearts against

Him. And like them you have been beholding mankind and all creation with new eyes,

since the gates of this city closed on you and on the pestilence. Now, at last, you know

the hour has struck to bend your thoughts to first and last things."

A wet wind was sweeping up the nave, making the candle-flames bend and

flicker.

The pungency of burning wax, coughs, a stifled sneeze, rose toward Father

Paneloux, who, reverting to his exordium with a subtlety that was much appreciated,

went on in a calm, almost matter-of-fact voice: "Many of you are wondering, I know,

what I am leading up to. I wish to lead you to the truth and teach you to rejoice, yes,

rejoice, in spite of all that I have been telling you.

For the time is past when a helping hand or mere words of good advice could set

you on the right path. Today the truth is a command. It is a red spear sternly pointing to

the narrow path, the one way of salvation. And thus, my brothers, at last it is revealed to

you, the divine compassion which has ordained good and evil in everything; wrath and

pity; the plague and your salvation. This same pestilence which is slaying you works for

your good and points your path.

"Many centuries ago the Christians of Abyssinia saw in the plague a sure and

God-sent means of winning eternal life. Those who were not yet stricken wrapped round

them sheets in which men had died of plague, so as to make sure of their death. I grant

you such a frenzied quest of salvation was not to be commended.

It shows an overhaste, indeed, a presumptuousness, which we can but deplore. No

man should seek to force God's hand or to hurry on the appointed hour, and from a

practice that aims at speeding up the order of events which God has ordained unalterably

from all time, it is but a step to heresy. Yet we can learn a salutary lesson from the zeal,

excessive though it was, of those Abyssinian Christians. Much of it is alien to our more

enlightened spirits, and yet it gives us a glimpse of that radiant eternal light which glows,

a small still flame, in the dark core of human suffering. And this light, too, illuminates the

shadowed paths that lead towards deliverance. It reveals the will of God in action,

unfailingly transforming evil into good. And once again today it is leading us through the

dark valley of fears and groans towards the holy silence, the wellspring of all life. This,

my friends, is the vast consolation I would hold out to you, so that when you leave this

house of God you will carry away with you not only words of wrath, but a message, too,

of comfort for your hearts."

Everyone supposed that the sermon had ended. Outside, the rain had ceased and

watery sunshine was yellowing the Cathedral square. Vague sounds of voices came from

the streets, and a low hum of traffic, the speech of an awakening town.

Discreetly, with a subdued rustling, the congregation gathered together their

belongings. However, the Father had a few more words to say. He told them that after

having made it clear that this plague came from God for the punishment of their sins, he

would not have recourse, in concluding, to an eloquence that, considering the tragic

nature of the occasion, would be out of keeping. He hoped and believed that all of them

now saw their position in its true light. But, before leaving the pulpit, he would like to tell

them of something he had been reading in an old chronicle of the Black Death at

Marseille. In it Mathieu Marais, the chronicler, laments his lot; he says he has been cast

into hell to languish without succor and without hope. Well, Mathieu Marais was blind!

Never more intensely than today had he, Father Paneloux, felt the immanence of divine

succor and Christian hope granted to all alike. He hoped against hope that, despite all the

horrors of these dark days, despite the groans of men and women in agony, our fellow

citizens would offer up to heaven that one prayer which is truly Christian, a prayer of

love. And God would see to the rest.

IT is hard to say if this sermon had any effect on our townsfolk. M. Othon, the

magistrate, assured Dr. Rieux that he had found the preacher's arguments "absolutely

irrefutable." But not everyone took so unqualified a view. To some the sermon simply

brought home the fact that they had been sentenced, for an unknown crime, to an

indeterminate period of punishment. And while a good many people adapted themselves

to confinement and carried on their humdrum lives as before, there were others who

rebelled and whose one idea now was to break loose from the prison-house.

At first the fact of being cut off from the outside world was accepted with a more

or less good grace, much as people would have put up with any other temporary

inconvenience that interfered with only a few of their habits. But, now they had abruptly

become aware that they were undergoing a sort of incarceration under that blue dome of

sky, already beginning to sizzle in the fires of summer, they had a vague sensation that

their whole lives were threatened by the present turn of events, and in the evening, when

the cooler air revived their energy, this feeling of being locked in like criminals prompted

them sometimes to foolhardy acts.

It is noteworthy, this may or may not have been due to mere coincidence, that this

Sunday of the sermon marked the beginning of something like a widespread panic in the

town, and it took so deep a hold as to lead one to suspect that only now had the true

nature of their situation dawned on our townspeople. Seen from this angle, the

atmosphere of the town was somewhat changed. But, actually, it was a problem whether

the change was in the atmosphere or in their hearts.

A few days after the sermon, when Rieux, on his way to one of the outlying

districts of the town, was discussing the change with Grand, he collided in the darkness

with a man who was standing in the middle of the pavement swaying from side to side

without trying to advance. At the same moment the street-lamps, which were being lit

later and later in the evening, went on suddenly, and a lamp just behind Rieux and his

companion threw its light full on the man's face.

His eyes were shut and he was laughing soundlessly. Big drops of sweat were

rolling down the face convulsed with silent merriment.

"A lunatic at large," Grand observed.

Rieux took his arm and was shepherding him on when he noticed that Grand was

trembling violently.

"If things go on as they are going," Rieux remarked, "the whole town will be a

madhouse." He felt exhausted, his throat was parched. "Let's have a drink."

They turned into a small cafe. The only light came from a lamp over the bar, the

heavy air had a curious reddish tinge, and for no apparent reason everyone was speaking

in undertones.

To the doctor's surprise Grand asked for a small glass of straight liquor, which he

drank off at a gulp. "Fiery stuff!" he observed; then, a moment later, suggested making a

move.

Out in the street it seemed to Rieux that the night was full of whispers.

Somewhere in the black depths above the street-lamps there was a low soughing

that brought to his mind that unseen flail threshing incessantly the languid air of which

Paneloux had spoken.

"Happily, happily," Grand muttered, then paused.

Rieux asked him what he had been going to say.

"Happily, I've my work."

"Ah yes," Rieux said. "That's something, anyhow." Then, so as not to hear that

eerie whistling in the air, he asked Grand if he was getting good results.

"Well, yes, I think I'm making headway."

"Have you much more to do?"

Grand began to show an animation unlike his usual self, and his voice took ardor

from the liquor he had drunk.

"I don't know. But that's not the point, doctor; yes, I can assure you that's not the

point."

It was too dark to see clearly, but Rieux had the impression that he was waving

his arms. He seemed to be working himself up to say something, and when he spoke, the

words came with a rush.

"What I really want, doctor, is this. On the day when the manuscript reaches the

publisher, I want him to stand up? after he's read it through, of course, and say to his

staff: 'Gentlemen, hats off!'"

Rieux was dumbfounded, and, to add to his amazement, he saw, or seemed to see,

the man beside him making as if to take off his hat with a sweeping gesture, bringing his

hand to his head, then holding his arm out straight in front of him. That queer whistling

overhead seemed to gather force.

"So you see," Grand added, "it's got to be flawless."

Though he knew little of the literary world, Rieux had a suspicion that things

didn't happen in it quite so picturesquely, that, for instance, publishers do not keep their

hats on in their offices. But, of course, one never can tell, and Rieux preferred to hold his

peace. Try as he might to shut his ears to it, he still was listening to that eerie sound

above, the whispering of the plague.

They had reached the part of the town where Grand lived and, as it was on a slight

eminence, they felt the cool night breeze fanning their cheeks and at the same time

carrying away from them the noises of the town.

Grand went on talking, but Rieux failed to follow all the worthy man was saying.

All he gathered was that the work he was engaged on ran to a great many pages,

and he was at almost excruciating pains to bring it to perfection. "Evenings, whole weeks,

spent on one word, just think! Sometimes on a mere conjunction!"

Grand stopped abruptly and seized the doctor by a button of his coat. The words

came stumbling out of his almost toothless mouth.

"I'd like you to understand, doctor. I grant you it's easy enough to choose between

a 'but' and an 'and.' It's a bit more difficult to decide between 'and' and 'then.' But

definitely the hardest thing may be to know whether one should put an 'and' or leave it

out."

"Yes," Rieux said, "I see your point."

He started walking again. Grand looked abashed, then stepped forward and drew

level.

"Sorry," he said awkwardly. "I don't know what's come over me this evening."

Rieux patted his shoulder encouragingly, saying he'd been much interested in

what Grand had said and would like to help him. This seemed to reassure Grand, and

when they reached his place he suggested, after some slight hesitation, that the doctor

should come in for a moment. Rieux agreed.

They entered the dining-room and Grand gave him a chair beside a table strewn

with sheets of paper covered with writing in a microscopic hand, criscrossed with

corrections.

"Yes, that's it," he said in answer to the doctor's questioning glance. "But won't

you drink something? I've some wine."

Rieux declined. He was bending over the manuscript.

"No, don't look," Grand said. "It's my opening phrase, and it's giving trouble, no

end of trouble."

He too was gazing at the sheets of paper on the table, and his hand seemed

irresistibly drawn to one of them. Finally he picked it up and held it to the shadeless

electric bulb so that the light shone through. The paper shook in his hand and Rieux

noticed that his forehead was moist with sweat.

"Sit down," he said, "and read it to me."

"Yes." There was a timid gratitude in Grand's eyes and smile. "I think I'd like you

to hear it."

He waited for a while, still gazing at the writing, then sat down. Meanwhile Rieux

was listening to the curious buzzing sound that was rising from the streets as if in answer

to the soughings of the plague. At that moment he had a preternaturally vivid awareness

of the town stretched out below, a victim world secluded and apart, and of the groans of

agony stifled in its darkness. Then, pitched low but clear, Grand's voice came to his ears.

"One fine morning in the month of May an elegant young horsewoman might

have been seen riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de

Boulogne."

Silence returned, and with it the vague murmur of the prostrate town. Grand had

put down the sheet and was still staring at it. After a while he looked up.

"What do you think of it?"

Rieux replied that this opening phrase had whetted his curiosity; he'd like to hear

what followed. Whereat Grand told him he'd got it all wrong. He seemed excited and

slapped the papers on the table with the flat of his hand.

"That's only a rough draft. Once I've succeeded in rendering perfectly the picture

in my mind's eye, once my words have the exact tempo of this ride, the horse is trotting,

one-two-three, one-two-three, see what I mean? the rest will come more easily and,

what's even more important, the illusion will be such that from the very first words it will

be possible to say: 'Hats off!'.

But before that, he admitted, there was lots of hard work to be done. He'd never

dream of handing that sentence to the printer in its present form. For though it sometimes

satisfied him, he was fully aware it didn't quite hit the mark as yet, and also that to some

extent it had a facility of tone approximating, remotely perhaps, but recognizably, to the

commonplace. That was more or less what he was saying when they heard the sound of

people running in the street below the window.

Rieux stood up.

"Just wait and see what I make of it," Grand said, and, glancing toward the

window, added: "When all this is over."

But then the sound of hurried footsteps came again. Rieux was already halfway

down the stairs, and when he stepped out into the street two men brushed past him. They

seemed to be on their way to one of the town gates. In fact, what with the heat and the

plague, some of our fellow citizens were losing their heads; there had already been some

scenes of violence and nightly attempts were made to elude the sentries and escape to the

outside world.

OTHERS, too, Rambert for example, were trying to escape from this atmosphere of

growing panic, but with more skill and persistence, if not with greater success.

For a while Rambert had gone on struggling with officialdom. If he was to be

believed, he had always thought that perseverance would win through, inevitably, and, as

he pointed out, resourcefulness in emergency was up his street, in a manner of speaking.

So he plodded away, calling on all sorts of officials and others whose influence would

have had weight in normal conditions. But, as things were, such influence was

unavailing. For the most part they were men with well-defined and sound ideas on

everything concerning exports, banking, the fruit or wine trade; men of proved ability in

handling problems relating to insurance, the interpretation of ill-drawn contracts, and the

like; of high qualifications and evident good intentions. That, in fact, was what struck one

most, the excellence of their intentions. But as regards plague their competence was

practically nil.

However, whenever opportunity arose, Rambert had tackled each of them and

pleaded his cause. The gist of his argument was always the same: that he was a stranger

to our town and, that being so, his case deserved special consideration.

Mostly the men he talked to conceded this point readily enough. But usually they

added that a good number of other people were in a like case, and thus his position was

not so exceptional as he seemed to suppose. To this Rambert could reply that this did not

affect the substance of his argument in any way. He was then told that it did affect the

position, already difficult, of the authorities, who were against showing any favoritism

and thus running the risk of creating what, with obvious repugnance, they called "a

precedent."

In conversation with Dr. Rieux, Rambert classified the people whom he had

approached in various categories. Those who used the arguments mentioned above he

called the sticklers. Besides these there were the consolers, who assured him that the

present state of things couldn't possibly last and, when asked for definite suggestions,

fobbed him off by telling him he was making too much fuss about a passing

inconvenience. Then there were the very important persons who asked the visitor to leave

a brief note of his case and informed him they would decide on it in due course; the

triflers, who offered him billeting warrants or gave the addresses of lodgings; the red-tape

merchants, who made him fill up a form and promptly interred it in a file; overworked

officials, who raised their arms to heaven, and much-harassed officials who simply

looked away; and, finally, the traditionalists, these were by far the greatest number, who

referred Rambert to another office or recommended some new method of approach.

These fruitless interviews had thoroughly worn out the journalist; on the credit

side he had obtained much insight into the inner workings of a municipal office and a

Prefect's headquarters, by dint of sitting for hours on imitation-leather sofas, confronted

by posters urging him to invest in savings bonds exempt from income-tax, or to enlist in

the colonial army; and by dint of entering offices where human faces were as blank as the

filing-cabinets and the dusty records on the shelves behind them.

The only thing gained by all this expenditure of energy, Rambert told Rieux with

a hint of bitterness, was that it served to keep his mind off his predicament.

In fact, the rapid progress of the plague practically escaped his notice. Also, it

made the days pass more quickly and, given the situation in which the whole town was

placed, it might be said that every day lived through brought everyone, provided he

survived, twenty-four hours nearer the end of his ordeal. Rieux could but admit the truth

of this reasoning, but to his mind its truth was of rather too general an order.

At one moment Rambert had a gleam of hope. A form was sent him from the

Prefect's office with instructions that he was to fill in carefully all the blanks. It included

questions concerning his identity, his family, his present and former sources of income;

in fact, he was to give what is known as a curriculum vitae. He got an impression that

inquiries were on foot with a view to drawing up a list of persons who might be

instructed to leave the town and return to their homes. Some vague information gleaned

from an employee in one of the offices confirmed this impression. But on going further

into the matter and finally discovering the office from which the form had emanated, he

was told that this information was being collected with a view to certain contingencies.

"What contingencies?" he asked.

He then learned that the contingency was the possibility of his falling ill and

dying of plague; the data supplied would enable the authorities to notify his family and

also to decide if the hospital expenses should be borne by the municipality or if, in due

course, they could be recovered from his relatives. On the face of it this implied that he

was not completely cut off from the woman who was awaiting his return, since the

powers that be were obviously giving heed to both of them. But that was no consolation.

The really remarkable thing, and Rambert was greatly struck by this, was the way in

which, in the very midst of catastrophe, offices could go on functioning serenely and take

initiatives of no immediate relevance, and often unknown to the highest authority, purely

and simply because they had been created originally for this purpose.

The next phase was at once the easiest and the hardest for Rambert. It was a

period of sheer lethargy. He had gone the round of offices, taken every step that could be

taken, and realized that for the present all avenues of that kind were closed to him. So

now he drifted aimlessly from cafe to cafe. In the mornings he would sit on the terrace of

one of them and read a newspaper in the hope of finding some indication that the

epidemic was on the wane. He would gaze at the faces of the passers-by, often turning

away disgustedly from their look of unrelieved gloom, and after reading for the nth time

the shopsigns on the other side of the street, the advertisements of popular drinks that

were no longer procurable, would rise and walk again at random in the yellow streets.

Thus he killed time till nightfall, moving about the town and stopping now and

then at a cafe or restaurant. One evening Rieux noticed him hovering round the door of a

cafe, unable to make up his mind to enter. At last he decided to go in and sat down at a

table at the back of the room. It was the time when, acting under orders, cafe-proprietors

deferred as long as possible turning on their lights. Gray dusk was seeping into the room,

the pink of sunset glowed in the wall mirrors, and the marble-topped tables glimmered

white in the gathering darkness. Seated in the empty cafe, Rambert looked pathetically

lost, a mere shade among the shadows, and Rieux guessed this was the hour when he felt

most derelict. It was, indeed, the hour of day when all the prisoners of the town realized

their dereliction and each was thinking that something, no matter what, must be done to

hasten their deliverance. Rieux turned hurriedly away.

Rambert also spent a certain amount of time at the railroad station. No one was

allowed on the platforms. But the waiting-rooms, which could be entered from outside,

remained open and, being cool and dark, were often patronized by beggars on very hot

days. Rambert spent much time studying the timetables, reading the prohibitions against

spitting, and the passengers' regulations.

After that he sat down in a corner. An old cast-iron stove, which had been stone-

cold for months, rose like a sort of landmark in the middle of the room, surrounded by

figure-of-eight patterns on the floor, the traceries of long-past sprinklings. Posters on the

walls gaily invited tourists to a carefree holiday at Cannes or Bandol. And in his corner

Rambert savored that bitter sense of freedom which comes of total deprivation. The

evocations which at that time he found most poignant were, anyhow according to what he

told Rieux, those of Paris.

There rose before his eyes, unsummoned, vistas of old stones and riverbanks, the

pigeons of the Palais-Royal, the Gare du Nord, quiet old streets round the Pantheon, and

many another scene of the city he'd never known he loved so much, and these mental

pictures killed all desire for any form of action. Rieux felt fairly sure he was identifying

these scenes with memories of his love. And when one day Rambert told him that he

liked waking up at four in the morning and thinking of his beloved Paris, the doctor

guessed easily enough, basing this on his own experience, that that was his favorite time

for conjuring up pictures of the woman from whom he now was parted. This was, indeed,

the hour when he could feel surest she was wholly his. Till four in the morning one is

seldom doing anything and at that hour, even if the night has been a night of betrayal, one

is asleep. Yes, everyone sleeps at that hour, and this is reassuring, since the great longing

of an unquiet heart is to possess constantly and consciously the loved one, or, failing that,

to be able to plunge the loved one, when a time of absence intervenes, into a dreamless

sleep timed to last unbroken until the day they meet again.

Shortly after Father Paneloux's sermon the hot weather set in with a vengeance.

On the day following the unseasonable downpour of that Sunday, summer blazed

out above the housetops. First a strong, scorching wind blew steadily for a whole day,

drying up the walls. And then the sun took charge, incessant waves of heat and light

swept the town daylong, and but for arcaded streets and the interiors of houses,

everything lay naked to the dazzling impact of the light. The sun stalked our townsfolk

along every byway, into every nook; and when they paused, it struck.

Since this first onslaught of the heat synchronized with a startling increase in the

number of victims, there were now nearly seven hundred deaths a week, a mood of

profound discouragement settled on the town. In the suburbs little was left of the wonted

animation between the long flat streets and the terraced houses; ordinarily people living

in these districts used to spend the best part of the day on their doorsteps, but now every

door was shut, nobody was to be seen, even the Venetian blinds stayed down, and there

was no knowing if it was the heat or the plague that they were trying to shut out. In some

houses groans could be heard. At first, when that happened, people often gathered outside

and listened, prompted by curiosity or compassion. But under the prolonged strain it

seemed that hearts had toughened; people lived beside those groans or walked past them

as though they had become the normal speech of men.

As a result of the fighting at the gates, in the course of which the police had had to

use their revolvers, a spirit of lawlessness was abroad. Some had certainly been wounded

in these brushes with the police, but in the town, where, owing to the combined

influences of heat and terror, everything was exaggerated, there was talk of deaths. One

thing, anyhow, was certain; discontent was on the increase and, fearing worse to come,

the local officials debated lengthily on the measures to be taken if the populace, goaded

to frenzy by the epidemic, got completely out of hand. The newspapers published new

regulations reiterating the orders against attempting to leave the town and warning those

who infringed them that they were liable to long terms of imprisonment.

A system of patrols was instituted and often in the empty, sweltering streets,

heralded by a clatter of horse hoofs on the cobbles, a detachment of mounted police

would make its way between the parallel lines of close-shut windows. Now and again a

gunshot was heard; the special brigade recently detailed to destroy cats and dogs, as

possible carriers of infection, was at work. And these whipcrack sounds startling the

silence increased the nervous tension already existing in the town.

For in the heat and stillness, and for the troubled hearts of our townsfolk,

anything, even the least sound, had a heightened significance. The varying aspects of the

sky, the very smells rising from the soil that mark each change of season, were taken

notice of for the first time. Everyone realized with dismay that hot weather would favor

the epidemic, and it was clear that summer was setting in. The cries of swifts in the

evening air above the housetops were growing shriller. And the sky, too, had lost the

spaciousness of those June twilights when our horizons seem infinitely remote. In the

markets the flowers no longer came in buds; they were already in full bloom, and after

the morning's marketing the dusty pavements were littered with trampled petals. It was

plain to see that spring had spent itself, lavished its ardor on the myriads of flowers that

were bursting everywhere into bloom, and now was being crushed out by the twofold

onslaught of heat and plague. For our fellow citizens that summer sky, and the streets

thick in dust, gray as their present lives, had the same ominous import as the hundred

deaths now weighing daily on the town. That incessant sunlight and those bright hours

associated with siesta or with holidays no longer invited, as in the past, to frolics and

flirtation on the beaches. Now they rang hollow in the silence of the closed town, they

had lost the golden spell of happier summers. Plague had killed all colors, vetoed

pleasure.

That, indeed, was one of the great changes brought by the epidemic. Hitherto all

of us welcomed summer in with pleasant anticipation. The town was open to the sea and

its young folk made free of the beaches. But this summer, for all its nearness, the sea was

out of bounds; young limbs had no longer the run of its delights. What could we do under

these conditions? It is Tarrou once again who paints the most faithful picture of our life in

those days. Needless to say, he outlines the progress of the plague and he, too, notes that

a new phase of the epidemic was ushered in when the radio announced no longer weekly

totals, but ninety-two, a hundred and seven, and a hundred and thirty deaths in a day.

"The newspapers and the authorities are playing ball with the plague. They fancy they're

scoring off it because a hundred and thirty is a smaller figure than nine hundred and ten."

He also records such striking or moving incidents of the epidemic as came under his

notice; that, for instance, of the woman in a lonely street who abruptly opened a shuttered

window just above his head and gave two loud shrieks before closing the shutters again

on the dark interior of a bedroom. But he also noted that peppermint lozenges had

vanished from the drugstores, because there was a popular belief that when sucking them

you were proof against contagion.

He went on watching his pet specimen on the opposite balcony. It seemed that

tragedy had come to the ancient small-game hunter as well. One morning there had been

gunshots in the street and, as Tarrou put it, "some gobs of lead" had killed off most of the

cats and scared away the others; anyhow they were no longer about. That day the little

old man went on to his balcony at the usual hour, showed some surprise, and, leaning on

the rail, closely scanned the corners of the street. Then he settled down to wait, fretfully

tapping the balustrade with his right hand. After staying there for some time he tore up a

few sheets of paper, went back into his room, and came out again. After another longish

wait he retreated again into the room, slamming the french windows behind him. He

followed the same procedure daily during the rest of the week, and the sadness and

bewilderment on the old face deepened as the days went by.

On the eighth day Tarrou waited in vain for his appearance; the windows stayed

resolutely closed on all too comprehensible distress. This entry ends with Tarrou's

summing up. "It is forbidden to spit on cats in plague-time."

In another context Tarrou notes that, on coming home in the evenings, he

invariably saw the night watchman pacing the hall, like a sentry on his beat.

The man never failed to remind everyone he met that he'd foreseen what was

happening.

Tarrou agreed that he'd predicted a disaster, but reminded him that the event

predicted by him was an earthquake. To which the old fellow replied: "Ah, if only it had

been an earthquake! A good bad shock, and there you are! You count the dead and living,

and that's an end of it. But this here damned disease, even them who haven't got it can't

think of anything else."

The manager of the hotel was equally downhearted. In the early days travelers,

unable to leave the town, had kept on their rooms. But one by one, seeing that the

epidemic showed no sign of abating, they moved out to stay with friends. And the same

cause that had led to all the rooms' being occupied now kept them empty, since there

were no newcomers to the town. Tarrou was one of the very few remaining guests, and

the manager never lost an opportunity of informing him that, were he not reluctant to put

these gentlemen to inconvenience, he would have closed the hotel long ago. He often

asked Tarrou to say how long he thought the epidemic would last. "They say," Tarrou

informed him, "that cold weather stamps out diseases of this type." The manager looked

aghast. "But, my dear sir, it's never really cold in these parts. And, anyhow, that would

mean it's going to last many months more." Moreover, he was sure that for a long while

to come travelers would give the town a wide berth. This epidemic spelt the ruin of the

tourist trade, in fact.

After a short absence M. Othon, the owlish paterfamilias, made a reappearance in

the restaurant, but accompanied only by the two "performing poodles," his offspring. On

inquiry it came out that Mme Othon was in quarantine; she had been nursing her mother,

who had succumbed to plague.

"I don't like it a bit," the manager told Tarrou. "Quarantine or not, she's under

suspicion, which means that they are, too."

Tarrou pointed out that, if it came to that, everyone was "under suspicion." But

the manager had his own ideas and was not to be shaken out of them.

"No, sir. You and I, we're not under suspicion. But they certainly are."

However, M. Othon was impervious to such considerations and would not let the

plague change his habits. He entered the restaurant with his wonted dignity, sat down in

front of his children, and addressed to them at intervals the same nicely worded,

unamiable remarks. Only the small boy looked somewhat different; dressed in black like

his sister, a little more shrunken than before, he now seemed a miniature replica of his

father. The night watchman, who had no liking for M. Othon, had said of him to Tarrou:

"That fine gentleman will pass out with his clothes on. All dressed up and ready

to go. So he won't need no laying-out."

Tarrou has some comments on the sermon preached by Paneloux: "I can

understand that type of fervor and find it not displeasing. At the beginning of a pestilence

and when it ends, there's always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not

yet been lost; in the second, they're returning. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets

hardened to the truth, in other words, to silence. So let's wait."

Tarrou also records that he had a long talk with Dr. Rieux; all he remembered was

that it had "good results." In this connection he notes the color of Mme Rieux's, the

doctor's mother's, eyes, a limpid brown, and makes the odd observation that a gaze

revealing so much goodness of heart would always triumph over plague.

He has also a good deal to say about Rieux's asthma patient. He went with the

doctor to see him, immediately after their conversation. The old man greeted Tarrou with

a chuckle and rubbed his hands cheerfully. He was sitting up in bed with the usual two

pans of dried peas in front of him. "Ah, here's another of 'em!" he exclaimed when he saw

Tarrou. "It's a topsy-turvy world all right, more doctors than patients. Because it's

mowing them down, ain't it, more and more.

That priest's right; we were asking for it." Next day Tarrou came to see him

without warning.

From Tarrou's notes we gather that the old man, a dry-goods dealer by

occupation, decided at the age of fifty that he'd done enough work for a lifetime. He took

to his bed and never left it again, but not because of his asthma, which would not have

prevented his getting about. A small fixed income had seen him through to his present

age, seventyfive, and the years had not damped his cheerfulness. He couldn't bear the

sight of a watch, and indeed there wasn't one in the whole house. "Watches," he said, "are

silly gadgets, and dear at that." He worked out the time, that is to say, the time for meals,

with his two saucepans, one of which was always full of peas when he woke in the

morning. He filled the other, pea by pea, at a constant, carefully regulated speed. Thus

time for him was reckoned by these pans and he could take his bearings in it at any

moment of the day. "Every fifteen pans," he said, "it's feeding-time. What could be

simpler?"

If his wife was to be trusted, he had given signs of his vocation at a very early

age. Nothing, in fact, had ever interested him; his work, friendship, cafes, music, women,

outings, to all he was indifferent. He had never left his home town except once when he

had been called to Algiers for family affairs, and even then he had alighted from the train

at the first station after Oran, incapable of continuing the adventure. He took the first

train back.

To Tarrou, who had shown surprise at the secluded life he led, he had given the

following explanation, more or less. According to religion, the first half of a man's life is

an upgrade; the second goes downhill. On the descending days he has no claim, they may

be snatched from him at any moment; thus he can do nothing with them and the best

thing, precisely, is to do nothing with them. He obviously had no compunction about

contradicting himself, for a few minutes later he told Tarrou that God did not exist, since

otherwise there would be no need for priests. But, from some observations which

followed, Tarrou realized that the old fellow's philosophy was closely involved with the

irritation caused by the house-to-house collections in aid of charities, which took place

almost incessantly in that part of the town. What completed the picture of the old man

was a desire he expressed several times, and which seemed deeply rooted: the desire to

die at a very advanced age.

"Is he a saint?" Tarrou asked himself, and answered: "Yes, if saintliness is an

aggregate of habits."

Meanwhile Tarrou was compiling a longish description of a day in the plague-

stricken town; it was to give a full and accurate picture of the life of our fellow citizens

during that summer. "Nobody laughs," Tarrou observes, "except the drunks, and they

laugh too much." After which he embarks on his description.

"At daybreak light breaths of air fan the still empty streets. At this hour, between

the night's victims and the death-agonies of the coming day, it is as if for a while plague

stays its hand and takes breath. All shops are shut. But on some a notice: Closed owing to

plague, shows that when the others open presently, these will not. Still half-asleep, the

newsboys do not yet cry the news but, lounging at street corners, offer their wares to the

lamp-posts, with the vague gestures of sleepwalkers. Soon, awakened by the early

streetcars, they will fan out through the town, holding at arm's length sheets on which the

word PLAGUE looms large. Will there be a plague autumn? Professor B. says: 'No.' Toll

of the 94th day of plague: 124 deaths.

"In spite of the growing shortage of paper, which has compelled some dailies to

reduce their pages, a new paper has been launched: the Plague Chronicle, which sets out

'to inform our townspeople, with scrupulous veracity, of the daily progress or recession of

the disease; to supply them with the most authoritative opinions available as to its future

course; to offer the hospitality of its columns to all, in whatever walk of life, who wish to

join in combating the epidemic; to keep up the morale of the populace; to publish the

latest orders issued by the authorities; and to centralize the efforts of all who desire to

give active and wholehearted help in the present emergency.' Actually this newspaper

very soon came to devote its columns to advertisements of new, 'infallible' antidotes

against plague.

"Toward six in the morning all these papers are being sold to the lines that begin

to form outside the shops over an hour before they open; then to the passengers alighting

from the streetcars coming in, packed to capacity, from the suburbs. The cars are now the

only means of transport, and they have much difficulty in progressing, what with people

standing on the running-boards and hanging in clusters from the handrails. A queer thing

is how the passengers all try to keep their backs turned to their neighbors, twisting

themselves into grotesque attitudes in the attempt, the idea being, of course, to avoid

contagion. At every stop a cataract of men and women is disgorged, each in haste to put a

safe distance between himself or herself and the rest.

"When the first cars have gone by, the town gradually wakes up, early cafes open

their doors, and you see an array of cards on the counter: No Coffee, Bring Your Own

Sugar, and the like. Next the shops open and the streets grow livelier. And meanwhile the

light is swelling and the sky, even at this early hour, beginning to grow leaden-hued with

heat. This is the time when those who have nothing to do venture out on the boulevards.

Most of them seem determined to counteract the plague by a lavish display of luxury.

Daily, about eleven, you see a sort of dress parade of youths and girls, who make you

realize the frantic desire for life that thrives in the heart of every great calamity. If the

epidemic spreads, morals too will broaden, and we may see again the saturnalia of Milan,

men and women dancing round the graves.

"At noon, in a flash, all the restaurants fill up. Very quickly small groups of

people unable to find a seat form at the doors. Because of the intense heat the sky is

losing its brightness. Under big awnings the aspirants to food wait their turn, aligned

along the curbs of streets gaping and sizzling in the fires of noon. The reason for the

restaurants' being so crowded is that they solve for many the feeding problem. But they

do nothing to allay the fear of contagion.

Many of the customers spend several minutes methodically wiping their plates.

Not long ago some restaurants put up notices: Our plates, knives, and forks guaranteed

sterilized. But gradually they discontinued publicity of this order, since their customers

came in any case. People, moreover, spend very freely. Choice wines, or wines alleged to

be such, the costliest extras, a mood of reckless extravagance is setting in. It seems that

there was something like a panic in a restaurant because a customer suddenly felt ill, went

very white, and staggered precipitately to the door.

"Toward two o'clock the town slowly empties, it is the time when silence,

sunlight, dust, and plague have the streets to themselves. Wave after wave of heat flows

over the frontage of the tall gray houses during these long, languid hours. Thus the

afternoon wears on, slowly merging into an evening that settles down like a red winding-

sheet on the serried tumult of the town. At the start of the great heat, for some

unascertained reason, the evenings found the streets almost empty. But now the least

ripple of cooler air brings an easing of the strain, if not a flutter of hope. Then all stream

out into the open, drug themselves with talking, start arguing or love-making, and in the

last glow of sunset the town, freighted with lovers two by two and loud with voices, drifts

like a helmless ship into the throbbing darkness. In vain a zealous evangelist with a felt

hat and flowing tie threads his way through the crowd, crying without cease: 'God is great

and good. Come unto Him.' On the contrary, they all make haste toward some trivial

objective that seems of more immediate interest than God.

"In the early days, when they thought this epidemic was much like other

epidemics, religion held its ground. But once these people realized their instant peril, they

gave their thoughts to pleasure. And all the hideous fears that stamp their faces in the

daytime are transformed in the fiery, dusty nightfall into a sort of hectic exaltation, an

unkempt freedom fevering their blood.

"And I, too, I'm no different. But what matter? Death means nothing to men like

me. It's the event that proves them right. It was Tarrou who had asked Rieux for the

interview he refers to in his diary. On that evening, as it happened, just before Tarrou

arrived, the doctor had gazed for some moments at his mother, who was sitting very still

in a corner of the dining-room. Once her household tasks were over, she spent most of

her time in that chair. Her hands folded in her lap, she sat there waiting. Rieux wasn't

even sure it was for him she waited. However, something always changed in his mother's

face when he came in. The silent resignation that a laborious life had given it seemed to

light up with a sudden glow. Then she returned to her tranquillity. That evening she was

gazing out of the window at the now empty street. The street lighting had been reduced

by two thirds, and only at long intervals a lamp cast flickering gleams through the thick

darkness of the town.

"Will they keep to the reduced lighting as long as the plague lasts?" Mme Rieux

asked.

"I expect so."

"Let's hope it doesn't last till winter. It would be terribly depressing."

"Yes," Rieux said.

He saw his mother's gaze settle on his forehead. He knew that the worry and

overwork of the last few days had scored their traces there.

"Didn't things go well today?" his mother asked.

"Oh, much as usual."

As usual! That was to say the new consignment of serum sent from Paris seemed

less effective than the first, and the death-rate was rising. It was still impossible to

administer prophylactic inoculations elsewhere than in families already attacked; if its

use was to be generalized, very large quantities of the vaccine would have been needed.

Most of the buboes refused to burst, it was as if they underwent a seasonal hardening, and

the victims suffered horribly. During the last twenty-four hours there had been two cases

of a new form of the epidemic; the plague was becoming pneumonic. On this very day, in

the course of a meeting, the much-harassed doctors had pressed the Prefect, the

unfortunate man seemed quite at his wits' end, to issue new regulations to prevent

contagion being carried from mouth to mouth, as happens in pneumonic plague. The

Prefect had done as they wished, but as usual they were groping, more or less, in the

dark.

Looking at his mother, he felt an uprush of a half-forgotten emotion, the love of

his boyhood, at the sight of her soft brown gaze intent on him.

"Don't you ever feel alarmed, Mother?"

"Oh, at my age there isn't much left to fear."

"The days are very long, and just now I'm hardly ever at home."

"I don't mind waiting, if I know you're going to come back. And when you aren't

here, I think of what you're doing. Have you any news?"

"Yes, if I'm to believe the last telegram, everything's going as well as could be

expected. But I know she says that to prevent my worrying."

The doorbell rang. The doctor gave his mother a smile and went to open the door.

In the dim light on the landing Tarrou looked like a big gray bear. Rieux gave his

visitor a seat facing his desk, while he himself remained standing behind the desk chair.

Between them was the only light in the room, a desk lamp.

Tarrou came straight to the point. "I know," he said, "that I can talk to you quite

frankly."

Rieux nodded.

"In a fortnight, or a month at most," Tarrou continued, "you'll serve no purpose

here. Things will have got out of hand."

"I agree."

"The sanitary department is inefficient, understaffed, for one thing, and you're

worked off your feet."

Rieux admitted this was so.

"Well," Tarrou said, "I've heard that the authorities are thinking of a sort of

conscription of the population, and all men in good health will be required to help in

fighting the plague."

"Your information was correct. But the authorities are in none too good odor as it

is, and the Prefect can't make up his mind."

"If he daren't risk compulsion, why not call for voluntary help?"

"It's been done. The response was poor."

"It was done through official channels, and half-heartedly. What they're short on

is imagination. Officialdom can never cope with something really catastrophic. And the

remedial measures they think up are hardly adequate for a common cold. If we let them

carry on like this they'll soon be dead, and so shall we."

"That's more than likely," Rieux said. "I should tell you, however, that they're

thinking of using the prisoners in the jails for what we call the 'heavy work.'

"

"I'd rather free men were employed."

"So would I. But might I ask why you feel like that?"

"I loathe men's being condemned to death."

Rieux looked Tarrou in the eyes.

"So what?" he asked.

"It's this I have to say. I've drawn up a plan for voluntary groups of helpers.

Get me empowered to try out my plan, and then let's sidetrack officialdom. In any

case the authorities have their hands more than full already. I have friends in many walks

of life; they'll form a nucleus to start from. And, of course, I'll take part in it myself."

"I need hardly tell you," Rieux replied, "that I accept your suggestion most gladly.

One can't have too many helpers, especially in a job like mine under present conditions. I

undertake to get your plan approved by the authorities.

Anyhow, they've, no choice. But?" Rieux pondered. "But I take it you know that

work of this kind may prove fatal to the worker. And I feel I should ask you this; have

you weighed the dangers?"

Tarrou's gray eyes met the doctor's gaze serenely.

"What did you think of Paneloux's sermon, doctor?"

The question was asked in a quite ordinary tone, and Rieux answered in the same

tone.

"I've seen too much of hospitals to relish any idea of collective punishment.

But, as you know, Christians sometimes say that sort of thing without really

thinking it. They're better than they seem."

"However, you think, like Paneloux, that the plague has its good side; it opens

men's eyes and forces them to take thought?"

The doctor tossed his head impatiently.

"So does every ill that flesh is heir to. What's true of all the evils in the world is

true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves. All the same, when you see

the misery it brings, you'd need to be a madman, or a coward, or stone blind, to give in

tamely to the plague."

Rieux had hardly raised his voice at all; but Tarrou made a slight gesture as if to

calm him. He was smiling.

"Yes." Rieux shrugged his shoulders. "But you haven't answered my question yet.

Have you weighed the consequences?"

Tarrou squared his shoulders against the back of the chair, then moved his head

forward into the light.

"Do you believe in God, doctor?"

Again the question was put in an ordinary tone. But this time Rieux took longer to

find his answer.

"No, but what does that really mean? I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make

something out. But I've long ceased finding that original."

"Isn't that it, the gulf between Paneloux and you?"

"I doubt it. Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn't come in contact

with death; that's why he can speak with such assurance of the truth, with a capital T. But

every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath

on his deathbed thinks as I do. He'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point

out its excellence." Rieux stood up; his face was now in shadow. "Let's drop the subject,"

he said, "as you won't answer."

Tarrou remained seated in his chair; he was smiling again.

"Suppose I answer with a question."

The doctor now smiled, too.

"You like being mysterious, don't you? Yes, fire away."

"My question's this," said Tarrou. "Why do you yourself show such devotion,

considering you don't believe in God? I suspect your answer may help me to mine."

His face still in shadow, Rieux said that he'd already answered: that if he believed

in an all-powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to Him. But no one

in the world believed in a God of that sort; no, not even Paneloux, who believed that he

believed in such a God. And this was proved by the fact that no one ever threw himself

on Providence completely. Anyhow, in this respect Rieux believed himself to be on the

right road, in fighting against creation as he found it.

"Ah," Tarrou remarked. "So that's the idea you have of your profession?"

"More or less." The doctor came back into the light.

Tarrou made a faint whistling noise with his lips, and the doctor gazed at him.

"Yes, you're thinking it calls for pride to feel that way. But I assure you I've no

more than the pride that's needed to keep me going. I have no idea what's awaiting me, or

what will happen when all this ends. For the moment I know this; there are sick people

and they need curing. Later on, perhaps, they'll think things over; and so shall I. But

what's wanted now is to make them well. I defend them as best I can, that's all."

"Against whom?"

Rieux turned to the window. A shadow-line on the horizon told of the presence of

the sea. He was conscious only of his exhaustion, and at the same time was struggling

against a sudden, irrational impulse to unburden himself a little more to his companion;

an eccentric, perhaps, but who, he guessed, was one of his own kind.

"I haven't a notion, Tarrou; I assure you I haven't a notion. When I entered this

profession, I did it 'abstractedly,' so to speak; because I had a desire for it, because it

meant a career like another, one that young men often aspire to. Perhaps, too, because it

was particularly difficult for a workman's son, like myself. And then I had to see people

die. Do you know that there are some who refuse to die? Have you ever heard a woman

scream 'Never!' with her last gasp? Well, I have. And then I saw that I could never get

hardened to it. I was young then, and I was outraged by the whole scheme of things, or so

I thought.

Subsequently I grew more modest. Only, I've never managed to get used to seeing

people die. That's all I know. Yet after all?"

Rieux fell silent and sat down. He felt his mouth dry.

"After all?" Tarrou prompted softly.

"After all," the doctor repeated, then hesitated again, fixing his eyes on Tarrou,

"it's something that a man of your sort can understand most likely, but, since the order of

the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him

and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes toward the heaven

where He sits in silence."

Tarrou nodded.

"Yes. But your victories will never be lasting; that's all."

Rieux's face darkened.

"Yes, I know that. But it's no reason for giving up the struggle."

"No reason, I agree. Only, I now can picture what this plague must mean for you."

"Yes. A never ending defeat."

Tarrou stared at the doctor for a moment, then turned and tramped heavily toward

the door. Rieux followed him and was almost at his side when Tarrou, who was staring at

the floor, suddenly said:

"Who taught you all this, doctor?"

The reply came promptly:

"Suffering."

Rieux opened the door of his surgery and told Tarrou that he, too, was going out;

he had a patient to visit in the suburbs. Tarrou suggested they should go together and he

agreed. In the hall they encountered Mme Rieux, and the doctor introduced Tarrou to her.

"A friend of mine," he said.

"Indeed," said Mme Rieux, "I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance."

When she left them Tarrou turned to gaze after her. On the landing the doctor

pressed a switch to turn on the lights along the stairs. But the stairs remained in darkness.

Possibly some new light-saving order had come into force. Really, however, there was no

knowing; for some time past, in the streets no less than in private houses, everything had

been going out of order. It might be only that the concierge, like nearly everyone in the

town, was ceasing to bother about his duties, The doctor had no time to follow up his

thoughts; Tarrou's voice came from behind him.

"Just one word more, doctor, even if it sounds to you a bit nonsensical. You are

perfectly right."

The doctor merely gave a little shrug, unseen in the darkness.

"To tell the truth, all that's outside my range. But you? what do you know about

it?"

"Ah," Tarrou replied quite coolly, "I've little left to learn."

Rieux paused and, behind him, Tarrou's foot slipped on a step. He steadied

himself by gripping the doctor's shoulder.

"Do you really imagine you know everything about life?"

The answer came through the darkness in the same cool, confident tone.

"Yes."

Once in the street, they realized it must be quite late, eleven perhaps. All was

silence in the town, except for some vague rustlings. An ambulance bell clanged faintly

in the distance. They stepped into the car and Rieux started the engine.

"You must come to the hospital tomorrow," he said, "for an injection. But, before

embarking on this adventure, you'd better know your chances of coming out of it alive;

they're one in three."

"That sort of reckoning doesn't hold water; you know it, doctor, as well as I. A

hundred years ago plague wiped out the entire population of a town in Persia, with one

exception. And the sole survivor was precisely the man whose job it was to wash the

dead bodies, and who carried on throughout the epidemic."

"He pulled off his one-in-three chance, that's all." Rieux had lowered his voice.

"But you're right; we know next to nothing on the subject."

They were entering the suburbs. The headlights lit up empty streets. The car

stopped. Standing in front of it, Rieux asked Tarrou if he'd like to come in.

Tarrou said: "Yes." A glimmer of light from the sky lit up their faces.

Suddenly Rieux gave a short laugh, and there was much friendliness in it.

"Out with it, Tarrou! What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?"

"I don't know. My code of morals, perhaps."

"Your code of morals? What code?"

"Comprehension."

Tarrou turned toward the house and Rieux did not see his face again until they

were in the old asthma patient's room.

NEXT day Tarrou set to work and enrolled a first team of workers, soon to be followed

by many others.

However, it is not the narrator's intention to ascribe to these sanitary groups more

importance than their due. Doubtless today many of our fellow citizens are apt to yield to

the temptation of exaggerating the services they rendered. But the narrator is inclined to

think that by attributing overimportance to praiseworthy actions one may, by implication,

be paying indirect but potent homage to the worse side of human nature. For this attitude

implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy are

the general rule. The narrator does not share that view. The evil that is in the world

always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if

they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't

the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue;

the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and

therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can

be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.

Hence the sanitary groups, whose creation was entirely Tarrou's work, should be

considered with objectivity as well as with approval. And this is why the narrator

declines to vaunt in over-glowing terms a courage and a devotion to which he attributes

only a relative and reasonable importance. But he will continue being the chronicler of

the troubled, rebellious hearts of our townspeople under the impact of the plague.

Those who enrolled in the "sanitary squads," as they were called, had, indeed, no

such great merit in doing as they did, since they knew it was the only thing to do, and the

unthinkable thing would then have been not to have brought themselves to do it. These

groups enabled our townsfolk to come to grips with the disease and convinced them that,

now that plague was among us, it was up to them to do whatever could be done to fight it.

Since plague became in this way some men's duty, it revealed itself as what it really was;

that is, the concern of all.

So far, so good. But we do not congratulate a schoolmaster on teaching that two

and two make four, though we may, perhaps, congratulate him on having chosen his

laudable vocation. Let us then say it was praiseworthy that Tarrou and so many others

should have elected to prove that two and two make four rather than the contrary; but let

us add that this good will of theirs was one that is shared by the schoolmaster and by all

who have the same feelings as the schoolmaster, and, be it said to the credit of mankind,

they are more numerous than one would think, such, anyhow, is the narrator's conviction.

Needless to say, he can see quite clearly a point that could be made against him, which is

that these men were risking their lives. But again and again there comes a time in history

when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death.

The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing

what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is that of

knowing whether two and two do make four. For those of our townsfolk who risked their

lives in this predicament the issue was whether or not plague was in their midst and

whether or not they must fight against it.

Many fledgling moralists in those days were going about our town proclaiming

there was nothing to be done about it and we should bow to the inevitable. And Tarrou,

Rieux, and their friends might give one answer or another, but its conclusion was always

the same, their certitude that a fight must be put up, in this way or that, and there must be

no bowing down. The essential thing was to save the greatest possible number of persons

from dying and being doomed to unending separation. And to do this there was only one

resource: to fight the plague. There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was

merely logical.

Thus it was only natural that old Dr. Castel should plod away with unshaken

confidence, never sparing himself, at making anti-plague serum on the spot with the

makeshift equipment at his disposal. Rieux shared his hope that a vaccine made with

cultures of the bacilli obtained locally would take effect more actively than serum coming

from outside, since the local bacillus differed slightly from the normal plague bacillus as

defined in textbooks of tropical diseases. And Castel expected to have his first supply

ready within a surprisingly short period.

That, too, is why it was natural that Grand, who had nothing of the hero about

him, should now be acting as a sort of general secretary to the sanitary squads.

A certain number of the groups organized by Tarrou were working in the

congested areas of the town, with a view to improving the sanitary conditions there. Their

duties were to see that houses were kept in a proper hygienic state and to list attics and

cellars that had not been disinfected by the official sanitary service. Other teams of

volunteers accompanied the doctors on their house-to-house visits, saw to the evacuation

of infected persons, and subsequently, owing to the shortage of drivers, even drove the

vehicles conveying sick persons and dead bodies. All this involved the upkeep of

registers and statistics, and Grand undertook the task.

From this angle, the narrator holds that, more than Rieux or Tarrou, Grand was

the true embodiment of the quiet courage that inspired the sanitary groups. He had said

yes without a moment's hesitation and with the large-hearted-ness that was a second

nature with him. All he had asked was to be allotted light duties: he was too old for

anything else. He could give his time from six to eight every evening. When Rieux

thanked him with some warmth, he seemed surprised. "Why, that's not difficult! Plague is

here and we've got to make a stand, that's obvious. Ah, I only wish everything were as

simple!" And he went back to his phrase. Sometimes in the evening, when he had filed

his reports and worked out his statistics, Grand and Rieux would have a chat. Soon they

formed the habit of including Tarrou in their talks and Grand unburdened himself with

increasingly apparent pleasure to his two companions. They began to take a genuine

interest in the laborious literary task to which he was applying himself while plague raged

around him. Indeed, they, too, found in it a relaxation of the strain.

"How's your young lady on horseback progressing?" Tarrou would ask. And

invariably Grand would answer with a wry smile: "Trotting along, trotting along!" One

evening Grand announced that he had definitely discarded the adjective "elegant" for his

horsewoman.

From now on it was replaced by "slim."

"That's more concrete," he explained.

Soon after, he read out to his two friends the new version of the sentence:

" 'One fine morning in May a slim young horsewoman might have been seen

riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne.'

"Don't you agree with me one sees her better that way? And I've put 'one fine

morning in May' because 'in the month of May' tended rather to drag out the trot, if you

see what I mean."

Next he showed some anxiety about the adjective "handsome." In his opinion it

didn't convey enough, and he set to looking for an epithet that would promptly and

clearly "photograph" the superb animal he saw with his mind's eye. "Plump" wouldn't do;

though concrete enough, it sounded perhaps a little disparaging, also a shade vulgar.

"Beautifully groomed" had tempted him for a moment, but it was cumbrous and made the

rhythm limp somewhat. Then one evening he announced triumphantly that he had got it:

"A black sorrel mare." To his thinking, he explained, "black" conveyed a hint of elegance

and opulence.

"It won't do," Rieux said. "Why not?"

"Because 'sorrel' doesn't mean a breed of horse; it's a color."

"What color?"

"Well, er, a color that, anyhow, isn't black." Grand seemed greatly troubled.

"Thank you," he said warmly. "How fortunate you're here to help me! But you see

how difficult it is."

"How about 'glossy'?" Tarrou suggested.

Grand gazed at him meditatively, then "Yes!" he exclaimed. "That's good." And

slowly his lips parted in a smile.

Some days later he confessed that the word "flowery" was bothering him

considerably. As the only towns he knew were Oran and Montelimar, he sometimes

asked his friends to tell him about the avenues of the Bois de Boulogne, what sort of

flowers grew in them and how they were disposed. Actually neither Rieux nor Tarrou had

ever gathered the impression that those avenues were "flowery," but Grand's conviction

on the subject shook their confidence in their memories.

He was amazed at their uncertainty. "It's only artists who know how to use their

eyes," was his conclusion. But one evening the doctor found him in a state of much

excitement. For "flowery" he had substituted "flower-strewn." He was rubbing his hands.

"At last one can see them, smell them! Hats off, gentlemen!" Triumphantly he read out

the sentence:

"One fine morning in May a slim young horsewoman might have been seen riding

a glossy sorrel mare along the flower-strewn avenues of the Bois de Boulogne."

But, spoken aloud, the numerous "s" sounds had a disagreeable effect and Grand

stumbled over them, lisping here and there. He sat down, crestfallen; then he asked the

doctor if he might go. Some hard thinking lay ahead of him.

It was about this time, as was subsequently learned, that he began to display signs

of absentmindedness in the office. A serious view was taken of these lapses of attention,

as the municipality not only was working at high pressure with a reduced staff, but was

constantly having new duties thrust upon it. His department suffered, and his chief took

him severely to task, pointing out that he was paid to do certain work and was failing to

do it as it should be done. "I am told that you are acting as a voluntary helper in the

sanitary groups. You do this out of office hours, so it's no concern of mine. But the best

way of making yourself useful in a terrible time like this is to do your work well.

Otherwise all the rest is useless."

"He's right," Grand said to Rieux.

"Yes, he's right," the doctor agreed.

"But I can't steady my thoughts; it's the end of my phrase that's worrying me, I

don't seem able to sort it out."

The plethora of sibilants in the sentence still offended his ear, but he saw no way

of amending them without using what were, to his mind, inferior synonyms.

And that "flower-strewn" which had rejoiced him when he first lit on it now

seemed unsatisfactory. How could one say the flowers were "strewn" when presumably

they had been planted along the avenues, or else grew there naturally? On some evenings,

indeed, he looked more tired than Rieux.

Yes, this unavailing quest which never left his mind had worn him out; none the

less, he went on adding up the figures and compiling the statistics needed for the sanitary

groups. Patiently every evening he brought his totals up to date, illustrated them with

graphs, and racked his brains to present his data in the most exact, clearest form. Quite

often he went to see Rieux at one of the hospitals and asked to be given a table in an

office or the dispensary. He would settle down at it with his papers, exactly as he settled

down at his desk in the Municipal Office, and wave each completed sheet to dry the ink

in the warm air, noisome with disinfectants and the disease itself. At these times he made

honest efforts not to think about his "horsewoman," and concentrate on what he had to

do.

Yes, if it is a fact that people like to have examples given them, men of the type

they call heroic, and if it is absolutely necessary that this narrative should include a

"hero," the narrator commends to his readers, with, to his thinking, perfect justice, this

insignificant and obscure hero who had to his credit only a little goodness of heart and a

seemingly absurd ideal. This will render to the truth its due, to the addition of two and

two its sum of four, and to heroism the secondary place that rightly falls to it, just after,

never before, the noble claim of happiness. It will also give this chronicle its character,

which is intended to be that of a narrative made with good feelings, that is to say, feelings

that are neither demonstrably bad nor overcharged with emotion in the ugly manner of a

stage-play.

Such at least was Dr. Rieux's opinion when he read in newspapers or heard on the

radio the messages and encouragement the outer world transmitted to the plague-ridden

populace. Besides the comforts sent by air or overland, compassionate or admiring

comments were lavished on the henceforth isolated town, by way of newspaper articles or

broadcast talks. And invariably their epical or prize-speech verbiage jarred on the doctor.

Needless to say, he knew the sympathy was genuine enough. But it could be expressed

only in the conventional language with which men try to express what unites them with

mankind in general; a vocabulary quite unsuited, for example, to Grand's small daily

effort, and incapable of describing what Grand stood for under plague conditions.

Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep-bound town, the doctor

turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours' sleep he allowed himself. And

from the ends of the earth, across thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-

meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same

time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in suffering that he cannot

see. "Oran! Oran!" In vain the call rang over oceans, in vain Rieux listened hopefully;

always the tide of eloquence began to flow, bringing home still more the unbridgeable

gulf that lay between Grand and the speaker. "Oran, we're with you!" they called

emotionally. But not, the doctor told himself, to love or to die together? "and that's the

only way.

They're too remote."

And, as it so happens, what has yet to be recorded before coming to the

culmination, during the period when the plague was gathering all its forces to fling them

at the town and lay it waste, is the long, heartrendingly monotonous struggle put up by

some obstinate people like Rambert to recover their lost happiness and to balk the plague

of that part of themselves which they were ready to defend in the last ditch. This was

their way of resisting the bondage closing in upon them, and while their resistance lacked

the active virtues of the other, it had (to the narrator's thinking) its point, and moreover it

bore witness, even lit its futility and incoherences, to a salutary pride.

Rambert fought to prevent the plague from besting him. Once assured that there

was no way of getting out of the town by lawful methods, he decided, as he told Rieux, to

have recourse to others. He began by sounding cafe waiters. A waiter usually knows

much of what's going on behind the scenes. But the first he spoke to knew only of the

very heavy penalties imposed on such attempts at evasion. In one of the cafes he visited

he was actually taken for a stool-pigeon and curtly sent about his business. It was not

until he happened to meet Cottard at Rieux's place that he made a little headway. On that

day he and Rieux had been talking again about his unsuccessful efforts to interest the

authorities in his case, and Cottard heard the tail end of the conversation.

Some days later Cottard met him in the street and greeted him with the hail-

fellow-well-met manner that he now used on all occasions.

"Hello, Rambert! Still no luck?"

"None whatever."

"It's no good counting on the red-tape merchants. They couldn't understand if they

tried."

"I know that, and I'm trying to find some other way. But it's damned difficult."

"Yes," Cottard replied. "It certainly is."

He, however, knew a way to go about it, and he explained to Rambert, who was

much surprised to learn this, that for some time past he had been going the rounds of the

cafes, had made a number of acquaintances, and had learned of the existence of an

"organization" handling this sort of business. The truth was that Cottard, who had been

beginning to live above his means, was now involved in smuggling ventures concerned

with rationed goods. Selling contraband cigarettes and inferior liquor at steadily rising

prices, he was on the way to building up a small fortune.

"Are you quite sure of this?" Rambert asked.

"Quite. I had a proposal of the sort made to me the other day."

"But you didn't accept it."

"Oh, come, there's no need to be suspicious." Cottard's tone was genial. "I didn't

accept it because, personally, I've no wish to leave. I have my reasons."

After a short silence he added: "You don't ask me what my reasons are, I notice."

"I take it," Rambert replied, "that they're none of my business."

"That's so, in a way, of course. But from another angle? Well, let's put it like this:

I've been feeling much more at ease here since plague settled in."

Rambert made no comment. Then he asked:

"And how does one approach this organization, as you call it?"

"Ah," Cottard replied, "that's none too easy. Come with me."

It was four in the afternoon. The town was warming up to boiling-point under a

sultry sky. Nobody was about, all shops were shuttered. Cottard and Rambert walked

some distance without speaking, under the arcades. This was an hour of the day when the

plague lay low, so to speak; the silence, the extinction of all color and movement, might

have been due as much to the fierce sunlight as to the epidemic, and there was no telling

if the air was heavy with menace or merely with dust and heat. You had to look closely

and take thought to realize that plague was here. For it betrayed its presence only by

negative signs. Thus Cottard, who had affinities with it, drew Rambert's attention to the

absence of the dogs that in normal times would have been seen sprawling in the shadow

of the doorways, panting, trying to find a nonexistent patch of coolness.

They went along the boulevard des Palmiers, crossed the Place d'Armes, and then

turned down toward the docks. On the left was a cafe painted green, with a wide awning

of coarse yellow canvas projecting over the sidewalk. Cottard and Rambert wiped their

brows on entering. There were some small iron tables, also painted green, and folding

chairs. The room was empty, the air humming with flies; in a yellow cage on the bar a

parrot squatted on its perch, all its feathers drooping. Some old pictures of military

scenes, covered with grime and cobwebs, adorned the walls. On the tables, including that

at which Rambert was sitting, bird-droppings were drying, and he was puzzled whence

they came until, after some wing-flappings, a handsome cock came hopping out of his

retreat in a dark corner.

Just then the heat seemed to rise several degrees more. Cottard took off his coat

and banged on the table-top. A very small man wearing a long blue apron that came

nearly to his neck emerged from a doorway at the back, shouted a greeting to Cottard,

and, vigorously kicking the cock out of his way, came up to the table. Raising his voice to

drown the cock's indignant cacklings, he asked what the gentlemen would like. Cottard

ordered white wine and asked: "Where's Garcia?" The dwarf replied that he'd not shown

up at the cafe for several days.

"Think he'll come this evening?"

"Well, I ain't in his secrets, but you know when he usually comes, don't you?"

"Yes. Really, it's nothing very urgent; I only want him to know this friend of

mine."

The barkeeper rubbed his moist hands on the front of his apron.

"Ah, so this gentleman's in business too?"

"Yes," Cottard said.

The little man made a snuffling noise.

"All right. Come back this evening. I'll send the kid to warn him."

After they had left, Rambert asked what the business in question might be.

"Why, smuggling, of course. They get the stuff in past the sentries at the gates.

There's plenty money in it."

"I see." Rambert paused for a moment, then asked: "And, I take it, they've friends

in court?"

"You've said it!"

In the evening the awning was rolled up, the parrot squawking in its cage, and the

small tables were surrounded by men in their shirt-sleeves. When Cottard entered, one

man, with a white shirt gaping on a brick-red chest and a straw hat planted well back on

his head, rose to his feet. He had a sun-tanned face, regular features, small black eyes,

very white teeth, and two or three rings on his fingers. He looked about thirty.

"Hi!" he said to Cottard, ignoring Rambert. "Let's have one at the bar."

They drank three rounds in silence.

"How about a stroll?" Garcia suggested.

They walked toward the harbor. Garcia asked what he was wanted to do. Cottard

explained that it wasn't really for a deal that he wanted to introduce his friend, M.

Rambert, but only for what he called a "get-away." Puffing at his cigarette, Garcia walked

straight ahead. He asked some questions, always referring to Rambert as "he" and

appearing not to notice his presence.

"Why does he want to go?"

"His wife is in France."

"Ah!" After a short pause he added: "What's his job?"

"He's a journalist."

"Is he, now? Journalists have long tongues."

"I told you he's a friend of mine," Cottard replied.

They walked on in silence until they were near the wharves, which were now

railed off. Then they turned in the direction of a small tavern from which came a smell of

fried sardines.

"In any case," Garcia said finally, "it's not up my alley. Raoul's your man. And I'll

have to get in touch with him. It's none too easy."

"That so?" Cottard sounded interested. "He's lying low, is he?"

Garcia made no answer. At the door of the tavern he halted and for the first time

addressed Rambert directly.

"The day after tomorrow, at eleven, at the corner of the customs barracks in the

upper town." He made as if to go, then seemed to have an afterthought. "It's going to cost

something, you know." He made the observation in a quite casual tone.

Rambert nodded. "Naturally."

On the way back the journalist thanked Cottard.

"Don't mention it, old chap. I'm only too glad to help you. And then, you're a

journalist, I dare say you'll put in a word for me one day or another."

Two days later Rambert and Cottard climbed the wide shadeless street leading to

the upper part of the town. The barracks occupied by the customs officers had been partly

transformed into a hospital, and a number of people were standing outside the main

entrance, some of them hoping to be allowed to visit a patient, a futile hope, since such

visits were strictly prohibited, and others to glean some news of an invalid, news that in

the course of an hour would have ceased to count. For these reasons there were always a

number of people and a certain amount of movement at this spot, a fact that probably

accounted for its choice by Garcia for his meeting with Rambert.

"It puzzles me," Cottard remarked, "why you're so keen on going. Really, what's

happening here is extremely interesting."

"Not to me," Rambert replied.

"Well, yes, one's running some risks, I grant you. All the same, when you come to

think of it, one ran quite as much risk in the old days crossing a busy street."

Just then Rieux's car drew up level with them. Tarrou was at the wheel, and Rieux

seemed half-asleep. He roused himself to make the introductions.

"We know each other," Tarrou said. "We're at the same hotel." He then offered to

drive Rambert back to the center.

"No, thanks. We've an appointment here."

Rieux looked hard at Rambert.

"Yes," Rambert said.

"What's that?" Cottard sounded surprised. "The doctor knows about it?"

"There's the magistrate." Tarrou gave Cottard a warning glance.

Cottard's look changed. M. Othon was striding down the street toward them,

briskly, yet with dignity. He took off his hat as he came up with them.

"Good morning, Monsieur Othon," said Tarrou.

The magistrate returned the greeting of the men in the car and, turning to Rambert

and Cottard, who were in the background, gave them a quiet nod. Tarrou introduced

Cottard and the journalist. The magistrate gazed at the sky for a moment, sighed, and

remarked that these were indeed sad times.

"I've been told, Monsieur Tarrou," he continued, "that you are helping to enforce

the prophylactic measures. I need hardly say how commendable that is, a fine example.

Do you think, Dr. Rieux, that the epidemic will get worse?"

Rieux replied that one could only hope it wouldn't, and the magistrate replied that

one must never lose hope, the ways of Providence were inscrutable.

Tarrou asked if his work had increased as the result of present conditions.

"Quite the contrary. Criminal cases of what we call the first instance are growing

rarer. In fact, almost my only work just now is holding inquiries into more serious

breaches of the new regulations. Our ordinary laws have never been so well respected."

"That's because, by contrast, they necessarily appear good ones," Tarrou

observed.

The magistrate, who seemed unable to take his gaze off the sky, abruptly dropped

his mildly meditative air and stared at Tarrou.

"What does that matter? It's not the law that counts, it's the sentence. And that is

something we must all accept."

"That fellow," said Tarrou when the magistrate was out of hearing, "is Enemy

Number One."

He pressed the starter.

Some minutes later Rambert and Cottard saw Garcia approaching. Without

making any sign of recognition he came straight up to them and, by way of greeting, said:

"You'll have to wait a bit."

There was complete silence in the crowd around them, most of whom were

women.

Nearly all were carrying parcels; they had the vain hope of somehow smuggling

these in to their sick relatives, and the even crazier idea that the latter could eat the food

they'd brought. The gate was guarded by armed sentries, and now and then an eerie cry

resounded in the courtyard between the barrack rooms and the entrance. Whenever this

happened, anxious eyes turned toward the sick-wards.

The three men were watching the scene when a brisk "Good morning" from

behind them made them swing round. In spite of the heat Raoul was wearing a well-cut

dark suit and a felt hat with rolled-up brim. He was tall and strongly built, his face rather

pale. Hardly moving his lips, he said quickly and clearly:

"Let's walk down to the center. You, Garcia, needn't come."

Garcia lit a cigarette and remained there while they walked away. Placing himself

between Rambert and Cottard, Raoul set the pace, a fast one.

"Garcia's explained the situation," he said. "We can fix it. But I must warn you

it'll cost you a cool ten thousand."

Rambert said he agreed to these terms.

"Lunch with me tomorrow at the Spanish restaurant near the docks."

Rambert said: "Right," and Raoul shook his hand, smiling for the first time.

After he had gone, Cottard said he wouldn't be able to come to lunch next day, as

he had an engagement, but anyhow Rambert didn't need him any more.

When next day Rambert entered the Spanish restaurant, everyone turned and

stared at him. The dark, cellarlike room, below the level of the small yellow street, was

patronized only by men, mostly Spaniards, judging by their looks. Raoul was sitting at a

table at the back of the room. Once he had beckoned to the journalist and Rambert started

to go toward him, the curiosity left the faces of others and they bent over their plates

again. Raoul had beside him a tall, thin, ill-shaven man, with enormously wide shoulders,

an equine face, and thinning hair. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, displaying long, skinny

arms covered with black hair. When Rambert was introduced he gave three slow nods.

His own name, however, was not announced and Raoul, when referring to him, always

said "our friend."

"Our friend here thinks he may be able to help you. He is going?" Raoul broke

off, as the waitress had just come to take Rambert's order. "He is going to put you in

touch with two of our friends who will introduce you to some sentries whom we've

squared. But that doesn't mean you can start right away. You'll have to leave it to the

sentries to decide on the best moment. The simplest thing will be for you to stay some

nights with one of them; his home is quite near the gate. The first thing is for our friend

here to give you the contacts needed; then when everything's set, you'll settle with him

for the expenses."

Again the "friend" slowly moved his equine head up and down, without ceasing to

munch the tomato and pimento salad he was shoveling into his mouth. After which he

began to speak, with a slight Spanish accent. He asked Rambert to meet him, the next day

but one, at eight in the morning, in the Cathedral porch.

"Another two days' wait," Rambert observed.

"It ain't so easy as all that, you see," Raoul said. "Them boys take some finding."

Horse-face nodded slow approval once more. Some time was spent looking for a

subject of conversation. The problem was solved easily enough when Rambert

discovered that horse-face was an ardent football-player. He, too, had been very keen on

soccer. They discussed the French championship, the merits of professional English

teams, and the technique of passing. By the end of the meal horse-face was in high good

humor, was calling Rambert "old boy," and trying to convince him that the most sporting

position by far on the football field was that of center half. "You see, old boy, it's the

center half that does the placing. And that's the whole art of the game, isn't it?" Rambert

was inclined to agree, though he, personally, had always played center forward. The

discussion proceeded peacefully until a radio was turned on and, after at first emitting a

series of sentimental songs, broke into the announcement that there had been a hundred

and thirty-seven plague deaths on the previous day. No one present betrayed the least

emotion. Horse-face merely shrugged and stood up.

Raoul and Rambert followed his example.

As they were going out, the center half shook Rambert's hand vigorously. "My

name's Gonzales," he said.

To Rambert the next two days seemed endless. He looked up Rieux and described

to him the latest developments, then accompanied the doctor on one of his calls. He took

leave of him on the doorstep of a house where a patient, suspected to have plague, was

awaiting him. There was a sound of footsteps and voices in the hall; the family were

being warned of the doctor's visit.

"I hope Tarrou will be on time," Rieux murmured. He looked worn out.

"Is the epidemic getting out of hand?" Rambert asked.

Rieux said it wasn't that; indeed, the death-graph was rising less steeply. Only

they lacked adequate means of coping with the disease.

"We're short of equipment. In all the armies of the world a shortage of equipment

is usually compensated for by manpower. But we're short of man-power, too."

"Haven't doctors and trained assistants been sent from other towns?"

"Yes," Rieux said. "Ten doctors and a hundred helpers. That sounds a lot, no

doubt. But it's barely enough to cope with the present state of affairs. And it will be quite

inadequate if things get worse."

Rambert, who had been listening to the sounds within the house, turned to Rieux

with a friendly smile.

"Yes," he said, "you'd better make haste to win your battle." Then a shadow

crossed his face. "You know," he added in a low tone: "it's not because of that I'm

leaving."

Rieux replied that he knew it very well, but Rambert went on to say:

"I don't think I'm a coward, not as a rule, anyhow. And I've had opportunities of

putting it to the test. Only there are some thoughts I simply cannot endure."

The doctor looked him in the eyes.

"You'll see her again," he said.

"Maybe. But I just can't stomach the thought that it may last on and on, and all the

time she'll be growing older. At thirty one's beginning to age, and one's got to squeeze all

one can out of life. But I doubt if you can understand."

Rieux was replying that he thought he could, when Tarrou came up, obviously

much excited.

"I've just asked Paneloux to join us."

"Well?" asked the doctor.

"He thought it over, then said yes."

"That's good," the doctor said. "I'm glad to know he's better than his sermon."

"Most people are like that," Tarrou replied. "It's only a matter of giving them the

chance." He smiled and winked at Rieux. "That's my job in life, giving people chances."

"Excuse me," Rambert said, "I've got to be off."

On Thursday, the day of the appointment, Rambert entered the Cathedral porch at

five minutes to eight. The air was still relatively cool. Small fleecy clouds, which

presently the sun would swallow at a gulp, were drifting across the sky. A faint smell of

moisture rose from the lawns, parched though they were. Still masked by the eastward

houses, the sun was warming up Joan of Arc's helmet only, and it made a solitary patch

of brightness in the Cathedral square. A clock struck eight. Rambert took some steps in

the empty porch. From inside came a low sound of intoning voices, together with stale

wafts of incense and dank air.

Then the voices ceased. Ten small black forms came out of the building and

hastened away toward the center of the town. Rambert grew impatient. Other black forms

climbed the steps and entered the porch. He was about to light a cigarette when it struck

him that smoking might be frowned on here.

At eight fifteen the organ began to play, very softly. Rambert entered. At first he

could see nothing in the dim light of the aisle; after a moment he made out in the nave the

small black forms that had preceded him. They were all grouped in a corner, in front of a

makeshift altar on which stood a statue of St. Roch, carved in haste by one of our local

sculptors. Kneeling, they looked even smaller than before, blobs of clotted darkness

hardly more opaque than the gray, smoky haze in which they seemed to float. Above

them the organ was playing endless variations.

When Rambert stepped out of the Cathedral, he saw Gonzales already going

down the steps on his way back to the town.

"I thought you'd cleared off, old boy," he said to the journalist. "Considering how

late it is."

He proceeded to explain that he'd gone to meet his friends at the place agreed on,

which was quite near by, at ten to eight, the time they'd fixed, and waited twenty minutes

without seeing them.

"Something must have held them up. There's lots of snags, you know, in our line

of business."

He suggested another meeting at the same time on the following day, beside the

war memorial. Rambert sighed and pushed his hat back on his head.

"Don't take it so hard," Gonzales laughed. "Why, think of all the swerves and runs

and passes you got to make to score a goal."

"Quite so," Rambert agreed. "But the game lasts only an hour and a half."

The war memorial at Oran stands at the one place where one has a glimpse of the

sea, a sort of esplanade following for a short distance the brow of the cliff overlooking

the harbor. Next day, being again the first to arrive at the meeting-place, Rambert whiled

away the time reading the list of names of those who had died for their country. Some

minutes later two men strolled up, gave him a casual glance, then, resting their elbows on

the parapet of the esplanade, gazed down intently at the empty, lifeless harbor. Both wore

short-sleeved jerseys and blue trousers, and were of much the same height. The journalist

moved away and, seated on a stone bench, studied their appearance at leisure. They were

obviously youngsters, not more than twenty. Just then he saw Gonzales coming up.

"Those are our friends," he said, after apologizing for being late. Then he led

Rambert to the two youths, whom he introduced as Marcel and Louis. They looked so

much alike that Rambert had no doubt they were brothers.

"Right," said Gonzales. "Now you know each other, you can get down to

business."

Marcel, or Louis, said that their turn of guard duty began in two days and lasted a

week; they'd have to watch out for the night when there was the best chance of bringing it

off. The trouble was that there were two other sentries, regular soldiers, besides

themselves, at the west gate. These two men had better be kept out of the business; one

couldn't depend on them, and anyhow it would pile up expenses unnecessarily. Some

evenings, however, these two sentries spent several hours in the back room of a near-by

bar. Marcel, or Louis, said that the best thing Rambert could do would be to stay at their

place, which was only a few minutes' walk from the gate, and wait till one of them came

to tell him the coast was clear. It should then be quite easy for him to "make his get-

away."

But there was no time to lose; there had been talk about setting up duplicate

sentry posts a little farther out.

Rambert agreed and handed some of his few remaining cigarettes to the young

men.

The one who had not yet spoken asked Gonzales if the question of expenses had

been settled and whether an advance would be given.

"No," Gonzales said, "and you needn't bother about that; he's a pal of mine.

He'll pay when he leaves."

Another meeting was arranged. Gonzales suggested their dining together on the

next day but one, at the Spanish restaurant. It was at easy walking-distance from where

the young men lived. "For the first night," he added, "I'll keep you company, old boy."

Next day on his way to his bedroom Rambert met Tarrou coming down the stairs

at the hotel.

"Like to come with me?" he asked. "I'm just off to see Rieux."

Rambert hesitated.

"Well, I never feel sure I'm not disturbing him."

"I don't think you need worry about that; he's talked about you quite a lot."

The journalist pondered. Then, "Look here," he said. "If you've any time to spare

after dinner, never mind how late, why not come to the hotel, both of you, and have a

drink with me?"

"That will depend on Rieux." Tarrou sounded doubtful. "And on the plague," said

Tarrou.

At eleven o'clock that night, however, Rieux and Tarrou entered the small, narrow

bar of the hotel. Some thirty people were crowded into it, all talking at the top of their

voices. Coming from the silence of the plague-bound town, the two newcomers were

startled by the sudden burst of noise, and halted in the doorway. They understood the

reason for it when they saw that liquor was still to be had here. Rambert, who was

perched on a stool at a corner of the bar, beckoned to them. With complete coolness he

elbowed away a noisy customer beside him to make room for his friends.

"You've no objection to a spot of something strong?"

"No," Tarrou replied. "Quite the contrary."

Rieux sniffed the pungency of bitter herbs in the drink that Rambert handed him.

It was hard to make oneself heard in the din of voices, but Rambert seemed

chiefly concerned with drinking. The doctor couldn't make up his mind whether he was

drunk yet. At one of the two tables that occupied all the remaining space beyond the half-

circle round the bar, a naval officer, with a girl on each side of him, was describing to a

fat, red-faced man a typhus epidemic at Cairo. "They had camps, you know," he was

saying, "for the natives, with tents for the sick ones and a ring of sentries all round. If a

member of the family came along and tried to smuggle in one of those damn-fool native

remedies, they fired at sight.

A bit tough, I grant you, but it was the only thing to do." At the other table, round

which sat a bevy of bright young people, the talk was incomprehensible, half drowned by

the stridence of St. James Infirmary coming from a loud-speaker just above their heads.

"Any luck?" Rieux had to raise his voice.

"I'm getting on," Rambert replied. "In the course of the week, perhaps."

"A pity!" Tarrou shouted.

"Why?"

"Oh," Rieux put in, "Tarrou said that because he thinks you might be useful to us

here. But, personally, I understand your wish to get away only too well."

Tarrou stood the next round of drinks.

Rambert got off his stool and looked him in the eyes for the first time.

"How could I be useful?"

"Why, of course," Tarrou replied, slowly reaching toward his glass, "in one of our

sanitary squads."

The look of brooding obstinacy that Rambert so often had came back to his face,

and he climbed again on to his stool.

"Don't you think these squads of ours do any good?" asked Tarrou, who had just

taken a sip of his glass and was gazing hard at Rambert.

"I'm sure they do," the journalist replied, and drank off his glass.

Rieux noticed that his hand was shaking, and he decided, definitely, that the man

was far gone in drink.

Next day, when for the second time Rambert entered the Spanish restaurant, he

had to make his way through a group of men who had taken chairs out on the sidewalk

and were sitting in the green-gold evening light, enjoying the first breaths of cooler air.

They were smoking an acrid-smelling tobacco. The restaurant itself was almost empty.

Rambert went to the table at the back at which Gonzales had sat when they met for the

first time. He told the waitress he would wait a bit. It was seven thirty.

In twos and threes the men from outside began to dribble in and seat themselves

at the tables. The waitresses started serving them, and a tinkle of knives and forks, a hum

of conversation, began to fill the cellarlike room. At eight Rambert was still waiting. The

lights were turned on. A new set of people took the other chairs at his table. He ordered

dinner. At half past eight he had finished without having seen either Gonzales or the two

young men.

He smoked several cigarettes. The restaurant was gradually emptying. Outside,

night was falling rapidly. The curtains hung across the doorway were billowing in a

warm breeze from the sea. At nine Rambert realized that the restaurant was quite empty

and the waitress was eying him curiously. He paid, went out, and, noticing that a cafe

across the street was open, settled down there at a place from which he could keep an eye

on the entrance of the restaurant. At half past nine he walked slowly back to his hotel,

racking his brains for some method of tracking down Gonzales, whose address he did not

know, and bitterly discouraged by the not unlikely prospect of having to start the

tiresome business all over again.

It was at this moment, as he walked in the dark streets along which ambulances

were speeding, that it suddenly struck him, as he informed Dr. Rieux subsequently, that

all this time he'd practically forgotten the woman he loved, so absorbed had he been in

trying to find a rift in the walls that cut him off from her. But at this same moment, now

that once more all ways of escape were sealed against him, he felt his longing for her

blaze up again, with a violence so sudden, so intense, that he started running to his hotel,

as if to escape the burning pain that none the less pervaded him, racing like wildfire in his

blood.

Very early next day, however, he called on Rieux, to ask him where he could find

Cottard.

"The only thing to do is to pick up the thread again where I dropped it."

"Come tomorrow night," Rieux said. "Tarrou asked me to invite Cottard here, I

don't know why. He's due to come at ten. Come at half past ten."

When Cottard visited the doctor next day, Tarrou and Rieux were discussing the

case of one of Rieux's patients who against all expectation had recovered.

"It was ten to one against," Tarrou commented. "He was in luck."

"Oh, come now," Cottard said. "It can't have been plague, that's all."

They assured him there was no doubt it was a case of plague.

"That's impossible, since he recovered. You know as well as I do, once you have

plague your number's up."

"True enough, as a general rule," Rieux replied. "But if you refuse to be beaten,

you have some pleasant surprises."

Cottard laughed.

"Precious few, anyhow. You saw the number of deaths this evening?"

Tarrou, who was gazing amiably at Cottard, said he knew the latest figures, and

that the position was extremely serious. But what did that prove? Only that still more

stringent measures should be applied.

"How? You can't make more stringent ones than those we have now."

"No. But every person in the town must apply them to himself."

Cottard stared at him in a puzzled manner, and Tarrou went on to say that there

were far too many slackers, that this plague was everybody's business, and everyone

should do his duty. For instance, any able-bodied man was welcome in the sanitary

squads.

"That's an idea," said Cottard, "but it won't get you anywhere. The plague has the

whip hand of you and there's nothing to be done about it."

"We shall know whether that is so", Tarrou's voice was carefully controlled, "only

when we've tried everything."

Meanwhile Rieux had been sitting at his desk, copying out reports. Tarrou was

still gazing at the little business man, who was stirring uneasily in his chair.

"Look here, Monsieur Cottard, why don't you join us?"

Picking up his derby hat, Cottard rose from his chair with an offended expression.

"It's not my job," he said. Then, with an air of bravado, he added: "What's more,

the plague suits me quite well and I see no reason why I should bother about trying to

stop it."

As if a new idea had just waylaid him, Tarrou struck his forehead.

"Why, of course, I was forgetting. If it wasn't for that, you'd be arrested."

Cottard gave a start and gripped the back of the chair, as if he were about to fall.

Rieux had stopped writing and was observing him with grave interest.

"Who told you that?" Cottard almost screamed.

"Why, you yourself!" Tarrou looked surprised. "At least, that's what the doctor

and I have gathered from the way you speak."

Losing all control of himself, Cottard let out a volley of oaths.

"Don't get excited," Tarrou said quietly. "Neither I nor the doctor would dream of

reporting you to the police. What you may have done is no business of ours.

And, anyway, we've never had much use for the police. Come, now! Sit down

again."

Cottard looked at the chair, then hesitantly lowered himself into it. He heaved a

deep sigh.

"It's something that happened ages ago," he began. "Somehow they've dug it up. I

thought it had all been forgotten. But somebody started talking, damn him! They sent for

me and told me not to budge till the inquiry was finished. And I felt pretty sure they'd end

up by arresting me."

"Was it anything serious?" Tarrou asked.

"That depends on what you mean by 'serious.' It wasn't murder, anyhow."

"Prison or transportation with hard labor?"

Cottard was looking almost abject.

"Well, prison, if I'm lucky." But after a moment he grew excited again. "It was all

a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes. And I can't bear the idea of being pulled in for

that, of being torn from my home and habits and everyone I know."

"And is that the reason," Tarrou asked, "why you had the bright idea of hanging

yourself?"

"Yes. It was a damn-fool thing to do, I admit."

For the first time Rieux spoke. He told Cottard that he quite understood his

anxiety, but perhaps everything would come right in the end.

"Oh, for the moment I've nothing to fear."

"I can see," Tarrou said, "that you're not going to join in our effort."

Twiddling his hat uneasily, Cottard gazed at Tarrou with shifty eyes.

"I hope you won't bear me a grudge."

"Certainly not. But", Tarrou smiled, "do try at least not to propagate the microbe

deliberately."

Cottard protested that he'd never wanted the plague, it was pure chance that it had

broken out, and he wasn't to blame if it happened to make things easier for him just now.

Then he seemed to pluck up courage again and when Rambert entered was shouting

almost aggressively:

"What's more, I'm pretty sure you won't get anywhere."

Rambert learned to his chagrin that Cottard didn't know where Gonzales lived; he

suggested that they'd better pay another visit to the small cafe. They made an

appointment for the following day. When Rieux gave him to understand that he'd like to

be kept posted, Rambert proposed that he and Tarrou should look him up one night at the

end of the week. They could come as late as they liked and would be sure to find him in

his room.

Next morning Cottard and Rambert went to the cafe and left a message for

Garcia, asking him to come that evening, or if this could not be managed, next day. They

waited for him in vain that evening. Next day Garcia turned up. He listened in silence to

what Rambert had to say; then informed him he had no idea what had happened, but

knew that several districts of the town had been isolated for twenty-four hours for a

house-to-house inspection. Quite possibly Gonzales and the two youngsters hadn't been

able to get through the cordon. All he could do was to put them in touch once more with

Raoul. Naturally this couldn't be done before the next day but one.

"I see," Rambert said. "I'll have to start it all over again, from scratch."

On the next day but one, Raoul, whom Rambert met at a street corner, confirmed

Garcia's surmise; the low-lying districts had, in fact, been isolated and a cordon put round

them. The next thing was to get in contact with Gonzales. Two days later Rambert was

lunching with the footballer.

"It's too damn silly," Gonzales said. "Of course you should have arranged some

way of seeing each other."

Rambert heartily agreed.

"Tomorrow morning," Gonzales continued, "we'll look up the kids and try to get a

real move on."

When they called next day, however, the youngsters were out. A note was left

fixing a meeting for the following day at noon, outside the high school. When Rambert

came back to his hotel, Tarrou was struck by the look on his face.

"Not feeling well?" he asked.

"It's having to start it all over again that's got me down." Then he added:

"You'll come tonight, won't you?"

When the two friends entered Rambert's room that night, they found him lying on

the bed. He got up at once and filled the glasses he had ready. Before lifting his to his

lips, Rieux asked him if he was making progress. The journalist replied that he'd started

the same round again and got to the same point as before; in a day or two he was to have

his last appointment. Then he took a sip of his drink and added gloomily: "Needless to

say, they won't turn up."

"Oh come! That doesn't follow because they let you down last time."

"So you haven't understood yet?" Rambert shrugged his shoulders almost

scornfully.

"Understood what?"

"The plague."

"Ah!" Rieux exclaimed.

"No, you haven't understood that it means exactly that, the same thing over and

over and over again."

He went to a corner of the room and started a small phonograph.

"What's that record?" Tarrou asked. "I've heard it before."

"It's St. James Infirmary."

While the phonograph was playing, two shots rang out in the distance.

"A dog or a get-away," Tarrou remarked.

When, a moment later, the record ended, an ambulance bell could be heard

clanging past under the window and receding into silence.

"Rather a boring record," Rambert remarked. "And this must be the tenth time I've

put it on today."

"Are you really so fond of it?"

"No, but it's the only one I have." And after a moment he added: "That's what I

said 'it' was, the same thing over and over again."

He asked Rieux how the sanitary groups were functioning. Five teams were now

at work, and it was hoped to form others. Sitting on the bed, the journalist seemed to be

studying his fingernails. Rieux was gazing at his squat, powerfully built form, hunched

up on the edge of the bed.

Suddenly he realized that Rambert was returning his gaze.

"You know, doctor, I've given a lot of thought to your campaign. And if I'm not

with you, I have my reasons. No, I don't think it's that I'm afraid to risk my skin again. I

took part in the Spanish Civil War."

"On which side?" Tarrou asked.

"The losing side. But since then I've done a bit of thinking."

"About what?"

"Courage. I know now that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable

of a great emotion, well, he leaves me cold."

"One has the idea that he is capable of everything," Tarrou remarked.

"I can't agree; he's incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a

long time. Which means that he's incapable of anything really worth while." He looked at

the two men in turn, then asked: "Tell me, Tarrou, are you capable of dying for love?"

"I couldn't say, but I hardly think so, as I am now."

"You see. But you're capable of dying for an idea; one can see that right away.

Well, personally, I've seen enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in

heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned it can be murderous. What interests me is living

and dying for what one loves."

Rieux had been watching the journalist attentively. With his eyes still on him he

said quietly:

"Man isn't an idea, Rambert."

Rambert sprang off the bed, his face ablaze with passion.

"Man is an idea, and a precious small idea, once he turns his back on love. And

that's my point; we, mankind, have lost the capacity for love. We must face that fact,

doctor. Let's wait to acquire that capacity or, if really it's beyond us, wait for the

deliverance that will come to each of us anyway, without his playing the hero. Personally,

I look no farther."

Rieux rose. He suddenly appeared very tired.

"You're right, Rambert, quite right, and for nothing in the world would I try to

dissuade you from what you're going to do; it seems to me absolutely right and proper.

However, there's one thing I must tell you: there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a

matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the

only means of righting a plague is, common decency."

"What do you mean by 'common decency'?" Rambert's tone was grave.

"I don't know what it means for other people. But in my case I know that it

consists in doing my job."

"Your job! I only wish I were sure what my job is!" There was a mordant edge to

Rambert's voice. "Maybe I'm all wrong in putting love first."

Rieux looked him in the eyes.

"No," he said vehemently, "you are not wrong."

Rambert gazed thoughtfully at them.

"You two," he said, "I suppose you've nothing to lose in all this. It's easier, that

way, to be on the side of the angels."

Rieux drained his glass.

"Come along," he said to Tarrou. "We've work to do."

He went out.

Tarrou followed, but seemed to change his mind when he reached the door. He

stopped and looked at the journalist.

"I suppose you don't know that Rieux's wife is in a sanatorium, a hundred miles or

so away."

Rambert showed surprise and began to say something; but Tarrou had already left

the room.

At a very early hour next day Rambert rang up the doctor.

"Would you agree to my working with you until I find some way of getting out of

the town?"

There was a moment's silence before the reply came.

"Certainly, Rambert. Thanks."

PART III

Thus week by week the prisoners of plague put up what fight they could. Some, like

Rambert, even contrived to fancy they were still behaving as free men and had the power

of choice. But actually it would have been truer to say that by this time, mid-August, the

plague had swallowed up everything and everyone. No longer were there individual

destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all.

Strongest of these emotions was the sense of exile and of deprivation, with all the

crosscurrents of revolt and fear set up by these. That is why the narrator thinks this

moment, registering the climax of the summer heat and the disease, the best for

describing, on general lines and by way of illustration, the excesses of the living, burials

of the dead, and the plight of parted lovers.

It was at this time that a high wind rose and blew for several days through the

plague-stricken city. Wind is particularly dreaded by the inhabitants of Oran, since the

plateau on which the town is built presents no natural obstacle, and it can sweep our

streets with unimpeded violence. During the months when not a drop of rain had

refreshed the town, a gray crust had formed on everything, and this flaked off under the

wind, disintegrating into dust-clouds. What with the dust and scraps of paper whirled

against peoples' legs, the streets grew emptier. Those few who went out could be seen

hurrying along, bent forward, with handkerchiefs or their hands pressed to their mouths.

At nightfall, instead of the usual throng of people, each trying to prolong a day that might

well be his last, you met only small groups hastening home or to a favorite cafe. With the

result that for several days when twilight came, it fell much quicker at this time of the

year, the streets were almost empty, and silent but for the long-drawn stridence of the

wind. A smell of brine and seaweed came from the unseen, storm-tossed sea. And in the

growing darkness the almost empty town, palled in dust, swept by bitter sea-spray, and

loud with the shrilling of the wind, seemed a lost island of the damned.

Hitherto the plague had found far more victims in the more thickly populated and

less well-appointed outer districts than in the heart of the town. Quite suddenly, however,

it launched a new attack and established itself in the business center. Residents accused

the wind of carrying infection, "broadcasting germs," as the hotel manager put it.

Whatever the reason might be, people living in the central districts realized that their turn

had come when each night they heard oftener and oftener the ambulances clanging past,

sounding the plague's dismal, passionless tocsin under their windows.

The authorities had the idea of segregating certain particularly affected central

areas and permitting only those whose services were indispensable to cross the cordon.

Dwellers in these districts could not help regarding these regulations as a sort of taboo

specially directed at themselves, and thus they came, by contrast, to envy residents in

other areas their freedom. And the latter, to cheer themselves up in despondent moments,

fell to picturing the lot of those others less free than themselves. "Anyhow, there are

some worse off than I," was a remark that voiced the only solace to be had in those days.

About the same time we had a recrudescence of outbreaks of fire, especially in the

residential area near the west gate. It was found, after inquiry, that people who had

returned from quarantine were responsible for these fires. Thrown off their balance by

bereavement and anxiety, they were burning their houses under the odd delusion that they

were killing off the plague in the holocaust.

Great difficulty was experienced in fighting these fires, whose numbers and

frequency exposed whole districts to constant danger, owing to the high wind. When the

attempts made by the authorities to convince these well-meaning incendiaries that the

official fumigation of their houses effectively removed any risk of infection had proved

unavailing, it became necessary to decree very heavy penalties for this type of arson. And

most likely it was not the prospect of mere imprisonment that deterred these unhappy

people, but the common belief that a sentence of imprisonment was tantamount to a death

sentence, owing to the very high mortality prevailing in the town jail. It must be admitted

that there was some foundation for this belief. It seemed that, for obvious reasons, the

plague launched its most virulent attacks on those who lived, by choice or by necessity,

in groups: soldiers, prisoners, monks, and nuns. For though some prisoners are kept

solitary, a prison forms a sort of community, as is proved by the fact that in our town jail

the guards died of plague in the same proportion as the prisoners. The plague was no

respecter of persons and under its despotic rule everyone, from the warden down to the

humblest delinquent, was under sentence and, perhaps for the first time, impartial justice

reigned in the prison.

Attempts made by the authorities to redress this leveling-out by some sort of

hierarchy?the idea was to confer a decoration on guards who died in the exercise of their

duties, came to nothing. Since martial law had been declared and the guards might, from

a certain angle, be regarded as on active service, they were awarded posthumously the

military medal. But though the prisoners raised no protest, strong exception was taken in

military circles, and it was pointed out, logically enough, that a most regrettable

confusion in the public mind would certainly ensue. The civil authority conceded the

point and decided that the simplest solution was to bestow on guards who died at their

post a "plague medal." Even so, since as regards the first recipients of the military medal

the harm had been done and there was no question of withdrawing the decoration from

them, the military were still dissatisfied. Moreover, the plague medal had the

disadvantage of having far less moral effect than that attaching to a military award, since

in time of pestilence a decoration of this sort is too easily acquired. Thus nobody was

satisfied.

Another difficulty was that the jail administration could not follow the procedure

adopted by the religious and, in a less degree, the military authorities. The monks in the

two monasteries of the town had been evacuated and lodged for the time being with

religious-minded families. In the same way, whenever possible, small bodies of men had

been moved out of barracks and billeted in schools or public buildings. Thus the disease,

which apparently had forced on us the solidarity of a beleaguered town, disrupted at the

same time longestablished communities and sent men out to live, as individuals, in

relative isolation. This, too, added to the general feeling of unrest.

Indeed, it can easily be imagined that these changes, combined with the high

wind, also had an incendiary effect on certain minds. There were frequent attacks on the

gates of the town, and the men who made them now were armed.

Shots were exchanged, there were casualties, and some few got away. Then the

sentry posts were reinforced, and such attempts quickly ceased. None the less, they

sufficed to start a wave of revolutionary violence, though only on a small scale. Houses

that had been burnt or closed by the sanitary control were looted. However, it seemed

unlikely that these excesses were premeditated. Usually it was some chance incentive that

led normally well-behaved people to acts which promptly had their imitators. Thus you

sometimes saw a man, acting on some crazy impulse, dash into a blazing house under the

eyes of its owner, who was standing by, dazed with grief, watching the flames. Seeing his

indifference, many of the onlookers would follow the lead given by the first man, and

presently the dark street was full of running men, changed to hunched, misshapen

gnomes by the flickering glow from the dying flames and the ornaments or furniture they

carried on their shoulders.

It was incidents of this sort that compelled the authorities to declare martial law

and enforce the regulations deriving from it. Two looters were shot, but we may doubt if

this made much impression on the others; with so many deaths taking place every day,

these two executions went unheeded, a mere drop in the ocean.

Actually scenes of this kind continued to take place fairly often, without the

authorities' making even a show of intervening. The only regulation that seemed to have

some effect on the populace was the establishment of a curfew hour. From eleven

onwards, plunged in complete darkness, Oran seemed a huge necropolis.

On moonlight nights the long, straight streets and dirty white walls, nowhere

darkened by the shadow of a tree, their peace untroubled by footsteps or a dog's bark,

glimmered in pale recession. The silent city was no more than an assemblage of huge,

inert cubes, between which only the mute effigies of great men, carapaced in bronze, with

their blank stone or metal faces, conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had

been. In lifeless squares and avenues these tawdry idols lorded it under the lowering sky;

stolid monsters that might have personified the rule of immobility imposed on us, or,

anyhow, its final aspect, that of a defunct city in which plague, stone, and darkness had

effectively silenced every voice.

But there was darkness also in men's hearts, and the true facts were as little

calculated to reassure our townsfolk as the wild stories going round about the burials. The

narrator cannot help talking about these burials, and a word of excuse is here in place. For

he is well aware of the reproach that might be made him in this respect; his justification is

that funerals were taking place throughout this period and, in a way, he was compelled, as

indeed everybody was compelled, to give heed to them. In any case it should not be

assumed that he has a morbid taste for such ceremonies; quite the contrary, he much

prefers the society of the living and, to give a concrete illustration, sea-bathing. But the

bathing-beaches were out of bounds and the company of the living ran a risk, increasing

as the days went by, of being perforce converted into the company of the dead. That was,

indeed, self-evident. True, one could always refuse to face this disagreeable fact, shut

one's eyes to it, or thrust it out of mind, but there is a terrible cogency in the self-evident;

ultimately it breaks down all defenses. How, for instance, continue to ignore the funerals

on the day when somebody you loved needed one?

Actually the most striking feature of our funerals was their speed. Formalities had

been whittled down, and, generally speaking, all elaborate ceremonial suppressed. The

plague victim died away from his family and the customary vigil beside the dead body

was forbidden, with the result that a person dying in the evening spent the night alone,

and those who died in the daytime were promptly buried. Needless to say, the family was

notified, but in most cases, since the deceased had lived with them, its members were in

quarantine and thus immobilized. When, however, the deceased had not lived with his

family, they were asked to attend at a fixed time; after, that is to say, the body had been

washed and put in the coffin and when the journey to the cemetery was about to begin.

Let us suppose that these formalities were taking place at the auxiliary hospital of

which Dr. Rieux was in charge. This converted school had an exit at the back of the main

building. A large storeroom giving on the corridor contained the coffins. On arrival, the

family found a coffin already nailed up in the corridor. Then came the most important

part of the business: the signing of official forms by the head of the family. Next the

coffin was loaded on a motor-vehicle, a real hearse or a large converted ambulance. The

mourners stepped into one of the few taxis still allowed to ply and the vehicles drove

hell-for-leather to the cemetery by a route avoiding the center of the town. There was a

halt at the gate, where police officers applied a rubber stamp to the official exit permit,

without which it was impossible for our citizens to have what they called a last resting-

place. The policeman stood back and the cars drew up near a plot of ground where a

number of graves stood open, waiting for inmates. A priest came to meet the mourners,

since church services at funerals were now prohibited. To an accompaniment of prayers

the coffin was dragged from the hearse, roped up, and carried to the graveside; the ropes

were slipped and it came heavily to rest at the bottom of the grave. No sooner had the

priest begun to sprinkle holy water than the first sod rebounded from the lid. The

ambulance had already left and was being sprayed with disinfectant, and while spadefuls

of clay thudded more and more dully on the rising layer of earth, the family were

bundling into the taxi. A quarter of an hour later they were back at home.

The whole process was put through with the maximum of speed and the minimum

of risk. It cannot be denied that, anyhow in the early days, the natural feelings of the

family were somewhat outraged by these lightning funerals. But obviously in time of

plague such sentiments can't be taken into account, and all was sacrificed to efficiency.

And though, to start with, the morale of the population was shaken by this summary

procedure, for the desire to have a "proper funeral" is more widespread than is generally

believed, as time went on, fortunately enough, the food problem became more urgent and

the thoughts of our townsfolk were diverted to more instant needs. So much energy was

expended on filling up forms, hunting round for supplies, and lining up that people had

no time to think of the manner in which others were dying around them and they

themselves would die one day. Thus the growing complications of our everyday life,

which might have been an affliction, proved to be a blessing in disguise. Indeed, had not

the epidemic, as already mentioned, spread its ravages, all would have been for the best.

For then coffins became scarcer; also there was a shortage of winding-sheets, and

of space in the cemetery. Something had to be done about this, and one obvious step,

justified by its practical convenience, was to combine funerals and, when necessary,

multiply the trips between the hospital and the burial-place.

At one moment the stock of coffins in Rieux's hospital was reduced to five. Once

filled, all five were loaded together in the ambulance. At the cemetery they were emptied

out and the iron-gray corpses put on stretchers and deposited in a shed reserved for that

purpose, to wait their turn. Meanwhile the empty coffins, after being sprayed with

antiseptic fluid, were rushed back to the hospital, and the process was repeated as often as

necessary. This system worked excellently and won the approval of the Prefect. He even

told Rieux that it was really a great improvement on the death-carts driven by Negroes of

which one reads in accounts of former visitations of this sort.

"Yes," Rieux said. "And though the burials are much the same, we keep careful

records of them. That, you will agree, is progress."

Successful, however, as the system proved itself in practice, there was something

so distasteful in the last rites as now performed that the Prefect felt constrained to forbid

relations of the deceased being present at the actual interment. They were allowed to

come only as far as the cemetery gates, and even that was not authorized officially. For

things had somewhat changed as regards the last stage of the ceremony. In a patch of

open ground dotted with lentiscus trees at the far end of the cemetery, two big pits had

been dug. One was reserved for the men, the other for the women. Thus, in this respect,

the authorities still gave thought to propriety and it was only later that, by the force of

things, this last remnant of decorum went by the board, and men and women were flung

into the death-pits indiscriminately. Happily, this ultimate indignity synchronized with

the plague's last ravages.

In the period we are now concerned with, the separation of the sexes was still in

force and the authorities set great store by it. At the bottom of each pit a deep layer of

quicklime steamed and seethed. On the lips of the pit a low ridge of quicklime threw up

bubbles that burst in the air above it. When the ambulance had finished its trips, the

stretchers were carried to the pits in Indian file.

The naked, somewhat contorted bodies were slid off into the pit almost side by

side, then covered with a layer of quicklime and another of earth, the latter only a few

inches deep, so as to leave space for subsequent consignments. On the following day the

next of kin were asked to sign the register of burials, which showed the distinction that

can be made between men and, for example, dogs; men's deaths are checked and entered

up.

Obviously all these activities called for a considerable staff, and Rieux was often

on the brink of a shortage. Many of the gravediggers, stretcher-bearers, and the like,

public servants to begin with, and later volunteers, died of plague. However stringent the

precautions, sooner or later contagion did its work. Still, when all is said and done, the

really amazing thing is that, so long as the epidemic lasted, there was never any lack of

men for these duties. The critical moment came just before the outbreak touched high-

water mark, and the doctor had good reason for feeling anxious. There was then a real

shortage of man-power both for the higher posts and for the rough work, as Rieux called

it. But, paradoxically enough, once the whole town was in the grip of the disease, its very

prevalence tended to make things easier, since the disorganization of the town's economic

life threw a great number of persons out of work. Few of the workers thus made available

were qualified for administrative posts, but the recruiting of men for the "rough work"

became much easier. From now on, indeed, poverty showed itself a stronger stimulus

than fear, especially as, owing to its risks, such work was highly paid. The sanitary

authorities always had a waiting-list of applicants for work; whenever there was a

vacancy the men at the top of the list were notified, and unless they too had laid off work

for good, they never failed to appear when summoned. Thus the Prefect, who had always

been reluctant to employ the prisoners in the jail, whether short-term men or lifers, was

able to avoid recourse to this distasteful measure. As long, he said, as there were

unemployed, we could afford to wait.

Thus until the end of August our fellow citizens could be conveyed to their last

resting-place, if not under very decorous conditions, at least in a manner orderly enough

for the authorities to feel that they were doing their duty by the dead and the bereaved.

However, we may here anticipate a little and describe the pass to which we came in the

final phase. From August onwards the plague mortality was and continued such as far to

exceed the capacity of our small cemetery. Such expedients as knocking down walls and

letting the dead encroach on neighboring land proved inadequate; some new method had

to be evolved without delay. The first step taken was to bury the dead by night, which

obviously permitted a more summary procedure. The bodies were piled into ambulances

in larger and larger numbers. And the few belated wayfarers who, in defiance of the

regulations, were abroad in the outlying districts after curfew hour, or whose duties took

them there, often saw the long white ambulances hurtling past, making the nightbound

streets reverberate with the dull clangor of their bells.

The corpses were tipped pell-mell into the pits and had hardly settled into place

when spadefuls of quicklime began to sear their faces and the earth covered them

indisdinctively, in holes dug steadily deeper as time went on.

Shortly afterwards, however, it became necessary to find new space and to strike

out in a new direction. By a special urgency measure the denizens of grants in perpetuity

were evicted from their graves and the exhumed remains dispatched to the crematorium.

And soon the plague victims likewise had to go to a fiery end.

This meant that the old crematorium east of the town, outside the gates, had to be

utilized. Accordingly the east-gate sentry post was moved farther out. Then a municipal

employee had an idea that greatly helped the harassed authorities; he advised them to

employ the streetcar line running along the coastal road, which was now unused. So the

interiors of streetcars and trailers were adapted to this new purpose, and a branch line was

laid down to the crematorium, which thus became a terminus.

During all the late summer and throughout the autumn there could daily be seen

moving along the road skirting the cliffs above the sea a strange procession of

passengerless streetcars swaying against the skyline. The residents in this area soon

learned what was going on. And though the cliffs were patrolled day and night, little

groups of people contrived to thread their way unseen between the rocks and would toss

flowers into the open trailers as the cars went by. And in the warm darkness of the

summer nights the cars could be heard clanking on their way, laden with flowers and

corpses.

During the first few days an oily, foul-smelling cloud of smoke hung low upon

the eastern districts of the town. These effluvia, all the doctors agreed, though unpleasant,

were not in the least harmful. However, the residents of this part of the town threatened to

migrate in a body, convinced that germs were raining down on them from the sky, with

the result that an elaborate apparatus for diverting the smoke had to be installed to

appease them. Thereafter only when a strong wind was blowing did a faint, sickly odor

coming from the east remind them that they were living under a new order and that the

plague fires were taking their nightly toll.

Such were the consequences of the epidemic at its culminating point. Happily it

grew no worse, for otherwise, it may well be believed, the resourcefulness of our

administration, the competence of our officials, not to mention the burning-capacity of

our crematorium, would have proved unequal to their tasks. Rieux knew that desperate

solutions had been mooted, such as throwing the corpses into the sea, and a picture had

risen before him of hideous jetsam lolling in the shallows under the cliffs. He knew, too,

that if there was another rise in the death-rate, no organization, however efficient, could

stand up to it; that men would die in heaps, and corpses rot in the street, whatever the

authorities might do, and the town would see in public squares the dying embrace the

living in the frenzies of an all too comprehensible hatred or some crazy hope.

Such were the sights and apprehensions that kept alive in our townspeople their

feeling of exile and separation. In this connection the narrator is well aware how

regrettable is his inability to record at this point something of a really spectacular order,

some heroic feat or memorable deed like those that thrill us in the chronicles of the past.

The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence, and by reason of their very

duration great misfortunes are monotonous. In the memories of those who lived through

them, the grim days of plague do not stand out like vivid flames, ravenous and

inextinguishable, beaconing a troubled sky, but rather like the slow, deliberate progress

of some monstrous thing crushing out all upon its path.

No, the real plague had nothing in common with the grandiose imaginings that

had haunted Rieux's mind at its outbreak. It was, about all, a shrewd, unflagging

adversary; a skilled organizer, doing his work thoroughly and well. That, it may be said

in passing, is why, so as not to play false to the facts, and, still more, so as not to play

false to himself, the narrator has aimed at objectivity.

He has made hardly any changes for the sake of artistic effect, except those

elementary adjustments needed to present his narrative in a more or less coherent form.

And in deference to this scruple he is constrained to admit that, though the chief source of

distress, the deepest as well as the most widespread, was separation, and it is his duty to

say more about it as it existed in the later stages of the plague, it cannot be denied that

even this distress was coming to lose something of its poignancy.

Was it that our fellow citizens, even those who had felt the parting from their

loved ones most keenly, were getting used to doing without them? To assume this would

fall somewhat short of the truth. It would be more correct to say that they were wasting

away emotionally as well as physically. At the beginning of the plague they had a vivid

recollection of the absent ones and bitterly felt their loss. But though they could clearly

recall the face, the smile and voice of the beloved, and this or that occasion when (as they

now saw in retrospect) they had been supremely happy, they had trouble in picturing

what he or she might be doing at the moment when they conjured up these memories, in a

setting so hopelessly remote. In short, at these moments memory played its part, but their

imagination failed them. During the second phase of the plague their memory failed

them, too. Not that they had forgotten the face itself, but, what came to the same thing, it

had lost fleshly substance and they no longer saw it in memory's mirror.

Thus, while during the first weeks they were apt to complain that only shadows

remained to them of what their love had been and meant, they now came to learn that

even shadows can waste away, losing the faint hues of life that memory may give. And

by the end of their long sundering they had also lost the power of imagining the intimacy

that once was theirs or understanding what it can be to live with someone whose life is

wrapped up in yours.

In this respect they had adapted themselves to the very condition of the plague, all

the more potent for its mediocrity. None of us was capable any longer of an exalted

emotion; all had trite, monotonous feelings. "It's high time it stopped," people would say,

because in time of calamity the obvious thing is to desire its end, and in fact they wanted

it to end. But when making such remarks, we felt none of the passionate yearning or

fierce resentment of the early phase; we merely voiced one of the few clear ideas that

lingered in the twilight of our minds. The furious revolt of the first weeks had given place

to a vast despondency, not to be taken for resignation, though it was none the less a sort

of passive and provisional acquiescence.

Our fellow citizens had fallen into line, adapted themselves, as people say, to the

situation, because there was no way of doing otherwise. Naturally they retained the

attitudes of sadness and suffering, but they had ceased to feel their sting. Indeed, to some,

Dr. Rieux among them, this precisely was the most disheartening thing: that the habit of

despair is worse than despair itself.

Hitherto those who were parted had not been utterly unhappy; there was always a

gleam of hope in the night of their distress; but that gleam had now died out.

You could see them at street corners, in cafes or friends' houses, listless,

indifferent, and looking so bored that, because of them, the whole town seemed like a

railway waiting-room. Those who had jobs went about them at the exact tempo of the

plague, with dreary perseverance. Everyone was modest. For the first time exiles from

those they loved had no reluctance to talk freely about them, using the same words as

everybody else, and regarding their deprivation from the same angle as that from which

they viewed the latest statistics of the epidemic. This change was striking since until now

they had jealously withheld their personal grief from the common stock of suffering; now

they accepted its inclusion.

Without memories, without hope, they lived for the moment only. Indeed, the

here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the

plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of

friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was

left us but a series of present moments.

However, this account of our predicament gives only the broad lines. Thus, while

it is true that all who were parted came ultimately to this state, we must add that all did

not attain it simultaneously; moreover, once this utter apathy had fallen on them, there

were still flashes of lucidity, broken lights of memory that rekindled in the exiles a

younger, keener sensibility. This happened when, for instance, they fell to making plans

implying that the plague had ended. Or when, quite unexpectedly, by some kindly

chance, they felt a twinge of jealousy, none the less acute for its objectlessness. Others,

again, had sudden accesses of energy and shook off their languor on certain days of the

week, for obvious reasons, on Sundays and Saturday afternoons, because these had been

devoted to certain ritual pleasures in the days when the loved ones were still accessible.

Sometimes the mood of melancholy that descended on them with the nightfall

acted as a sort of warning, not always fulfilled, however, that old memories were floating

up to the surface. That evening hour which for believers is the time to look into their

consciences is hardest of all hours on the prisoner or exile who has nothing to look into

but the void. For a moment it held them in suspense; then they sank back into their

lethargy, the prison door had closed on them once again.

Obviously all this meant giving up what was most personal in their lives.

Whereas in the early days of the plague they had been struck by the host of small

details that, while meaning absolutely nothing to others, meant so much to them

personally, and thus had realized, perhaps for the first time, the uniqueness of each man's

life; now, on the other hand, they took an interest only in what interested everyone else,

they had only general ideas, and even their tenderest affections now seemed abstract,

items of the common stock. So completely were they dominated by the plague that

sometimes the one thing they aspired to was the long sleep it brought, and they caught

themselves thinking:

"A good thing if I get plague and have done with it!" But really they were asleep

already; this whole period was for them no more than a long night's slumber. The town

was peopled with sleepwalkers, whose trance was broken only on the rare occasions

when at night their wounds, to all appearance closed, suddenly reopened. Then, waking

with a start, they would run their fingers over the wounds with a sort of absentminded

curiosity, twisting their lips, and in a flash their grief blazed up again, and abruptly there

rose before them the mournful visage of their love. In the morning they harked back to

normal conditions, in other words, the plague.

What impression, it may be asked, did these exiles of the plague make on the

observer? The answer is simple; they made none. Or, to put it differently, they looked

like everybody else, nondescript. They shared in the torpor of the town and in its puerile

agitations. They lost every trace of a critical spirit, while gaining an air of sang-froid.

You could see, for instance, even the most intelligent among them making a show like all

the rest of studying the newspapers or listening to the radio, in the hope apparently of

finding some reason to believe the plague would shortly end. They seemed to derive

fantastic hopes or equally exaggerated fears from reading the linens that some journalist

had scribbled at random, yawning with boredom at his desk. Meanwhile they drank their

beer, nursed their sick, idled, or doped themselves with work, filed documents in offices,

or played the phonograph at home, without betraying any difference from the rest of us.

In other words, they had ceased to choose for themselves; plague had leveled out

discrimination. This could be seen by the way nobody troubled about the quality of the

clothes or food he bought. Everything was taken as it came.

And, finally, it is worth noting that those who were parted ceased to enjoy the

curious privilege that had been theirs at the outset. They had lost love's egoism and the

benefit they derived from it. Now, at least, the position was clear; this calamity was

everybody's business. What with the gunshots echoing at the gates, the punctual thuds of

rubber stamps marking the rhythm of lives and deaths, the files and fires, the panics and

formalities, all alike were pledged to an ugly but recorded death, and, amidst noxious

fumes and the muted clang of ambulances, all of us ate the same sour bread of exile,

unconsciously waiting for the same reunion, the same miracle of peace regained. No

doubt our love persisted, but in practice it served nothing; it was an inert mass within us,

sterile as crime or a life sentence. It had declined on a patience that led nowhere, a

dogged expectation. Viewed from this angle, the attitude of some of our fellow citizens

resembled that of the long queues one saw outside the food-shops. There was the same

resignation, the same long-sufferance, inexhaustible and without illusions. The only

difference was that the mental state of the food-seekers would need to be raised to a

vastly higher power to make it comparable with the gnawing pain of separation, since this

latter came from a hunger fierce to the point of insatiability. In any case, if the reader

would have a correct idea of the mood of these exiles, we must conjure up once more

those dreary evenings sifting down through a haze of dust and golden light upon the

treeless streets filled with teeming crowds of men and women. For, characteristically, the

sound that rose toward the terraces still bathed in the last glow of daylight, now that the

noises of vehicles and motors, the sole voice of cities in ordinary times, had ceased, was

but one vast rumor of low voices and incessant footfalls, the drumming of innumerable

soles timed to the eerie whistling of the plague in the sultry air above, the sound of a huge

concourse of people marking time, a never ending, stifling drone that, gradually swelling,

filled the town from end to end, and evening after evening gave its truest, mournfulest

expression to the blind endurance that had ousted love from all our hearts.

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 worshippers 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

woollen 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 caldrons 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 co-operation 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.

PART V

Though this sudden setback of the plague was as welcome as it was unlooked-for, our

townsfolk were in no hurry to jubilate. While intensifying their desire to be set free, the

terrible months they had lived through had taught them prudence, and they had come to

count less and less on a speedy end of the epidemic. All the same, this new development

was the talk of the town, and people began to nurse hopes none the less heartfelt for being

unavowed. All else took a back place; that daily there were new victims counted for little

beside that staggering fact: the weekly total showed a decrease. One of the signs that a

return to the golden age of health was secretly awaited was that our fellow citizens,

careful though they were not to voice their hope, now began to talk, in, it is true, a

carefully detached tone, of the new order of life that would set in after the plague.

All agreed that the amenities of the past couldn't be restored at once; destruction

is an easier, speedier process than reconstruction. However, it was thought that a slight

improvement in the food-supply could safely be counted on, and this would relieve what

was just now the acutest worry of every household.

But in reality behind these mild aspirations lurked wild, extravagant hopes, and

often one of us, becoming aware of this, would hastily add that, even on the rosiest view,

you couldn't expect the plague to stop from one day to another.

Actually, while the epidemic did not stop "from one day to another," it declined

more rapidly than we could reasonably have expected. With the first week of January an

unusually persistent spell of very cold weather settled in and seemed to crystallize above

the town. Yet never before had the sky been so blue; day after day its icy radiance

flooded the town with brilliant light, and in the frost-cleansed air the epidemic seemed to

lose its virulence, and in each of three consecutive weeks a big drop in the death-roll was

announced. Thus over a relatively brief period the disease lost practically all the gains

piled up over many months. Its setbacks with seemingly predestined victims, like Grand

and Rieux's girl patient, its bursts of activity for two or three days in some districts

synchronizing with its total disappearance from others, its new practice of multiplying its

victims on, say, a Monday, and on Wednesday letting almost all escape, in short, its

accesses of violence followed by spells of complete inactivity, all these gave an

impression that its energy was flagging, out of exhaustion and exasperation, and it was

losing, with its self-command, the ruthless, almost mathematical efficiency that had been

its trump card hitherto. Of a sudden Castel's anti-plague injections scored frequent

successes, denied it until now. Indeed, all the treatments the doctors had tentatively

employed, without definite results, now seemed almost uniformly efficacious. It was as if

the plague had been hounded down and cornered, and its sudden weakness lent new

strength to the blunted weapons so far used against it. Only at rare moments did the

disease brace itself and make as it were a blind and fatal leap at three or four patients

whose recovery had been expected, a truly ill-starred few, killed off when hope ran

highest. Such was the case of M. Othon, the magistrate, evacuated from the quarantine

camp; Tarrou said of him that "he'd had no luck," but one couldn't tell if he had in mind

the life or the death of M. Othon. But, generally speaking, the epidemic was in retreat all

along the line; the official communiques, which had at first encouraged no more than

shadowy, half-hearted hopes, now confirmed the popular belief that the victory was won

and the enemy abandoning his positions. Really, however, it is doubtful if this could be

called a victory. All that could be said was that the disease seemed to be leaving as

unaccountably as it had come. Our strategy had not changed, but whereas yesterday it had

obviously failed, today it seemed triumphant. Indeed, one's chief impression was that the

epidemic had called a retreat after reaching all its objectives; it had, so to speak, achieved

its purpose.

Nevertheless, it seemed as if nothing had changed in the town. Silent as ever by

day, the streets filled up at nightfall with the usual crowds of people, now wearing

overcoats and scarves. Cafes and picture-houses did as much business as before. But on a

closer view you might notice that people looked less strained, and they occasionally

smiled. And this brought home the fact that since the outbreak of plague no one had

hitherto been seen to smile in public. The truth was that for many months the town had

been stifling under an airless shroud, in which a rent had now been made, and every

Monday when he turned on the radio, each of us learned that the rift was widening; soon

he would be able to breathe freely. It was at best a negative solace, with no immediate

impact on men's lives. Still, had anyone been told a month earlier that a train had just left

or a boat put in, or that cars were to be allowed on the streets again, the news would have

been received with looks of incredulity; whereas in mid-January an announcement of this

kind would have caused no surprise. The change, no doubt, was slight. Yet, however

slight, it proved what a vast forward stride our townsfolk had made in the way of hope.

And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the

dominion of the plague was ended.

It must, however, be admitted that our fellow citizens' reactions during that month

were diverse to the point of incoherence. More precisely, they fluctuated between high

optimism and extreme depression. Hence the odd circumstance that several more

attempts to escape took place at the very moment when the statistics were most

encouraging. This took the authorities by surprise, and, apparently, the sentries too, since

most of the "escapists" brought it off. But, looking into it, one saw that people who tried

to escape at this time were prompted by quite understandable motives. Some of them

plague had imbued with a scepticism so thorough that it was now a second nature; they

had become allergic to hope in any form. Thus even when the plague had run its course,

they went on living by its standards. They were, in short, behind the times. In the case of

others, chiefly those who had been living until now in forced separation from those they

loved, the rising wind of hope, after all these months of durance and depression, had

fanned impatience to a blaze and swept away their self-control. They were seized with a

sort of panic at the thought that they might die so near the goal and never see again the

ones they loved, and their long privation have no recompense. Thus, though for weary

months and months they had endured their long ordeal with dogged perseverance, the

first thrill of hope had been enough to shatter what fear and hopelessness had failed to

impair. And in the frenzy of their haste they tried to outstrip the plague, incapable of

keeping pace with it up to the end.

Meanwhile, there were various symptoms of the growing optimism. Prices, for

instance, fell sharply. This fall was unaccountable from the purely economic viewpoint.

Our difficulties were as great as ever, the gates were kept rigorously closed, and the food

situation was far from showing any improvement. Thus it was a purely psychological

reaction, as if the dwindling of the plague must have repercussions in all fields. Others to

profit by the spread of optimism were those who used to live in groups and had been

forced to live apart. The two convents reopened and their communal life was resumed.

The troops, too, were regrouped in such barracks as had not been requisitioned, and

settled down to the garrison life of the past.

Minor details, but significant.

This state of subdued yet active ferment prevailed until January 25, when the

weekly total showed so striking a decline that, after consulting the medical board, the

authorities announced that the epidemic could be regarded as definitely stemmed. True,

the communique went on to say that, acting with a prudence of which the population

would certainly approve, the Prefect had decided that the gates of the town were to

remain closed for two weeks more, and the prophylactic measures to remain in force for

another month. During this period, at the least sign of danger the standing orders would

be strictly enforced and, if necessary, prolonged thereafter for such a period as might be

deemed desirable."

All, however, concurred in regarding these phrases as mere official verbiage, and

the night of January 25 was the occasion of much festivity. To associate himself with the

popular rejoicings, the Prefect gave orders for the street lighting to be resumed as in the

past. And the townspeople paraded the brilliantly lighted streets in boisterous groups,

laughing and singing.

True, in some houses the shutters remained closed, and those within listened in

silence to the joyful shouts outside. Yet even in these houses of mourning a feeling of

deep relief prevailed; whether because at last the fear of seeing other members of the

household taken from them was calmed or because the shadow of personal anxiety was

lifted from their hearts. The families that perforce withdrew themselves the most from the

general jubilation were those who at this hour had one of their members down with

plague in hospital and, whether in a quarantine camp or at home, waited in enforced

seclusion for the epidemic to have done with them as it had done with the others. No

doubt these families had hopes, but they hoarded them and forbade themselves to draw

on them before feeling quite sure they were justified. And this time of waiting in silence

and exile, in a limbo between joy and grief, seemed still crueler for the gladness all

around them.

But these exceptions did not diminish the satisfaction of the great majority. No

doubt the plague was not yet ended, a fact of which they were to be reminded; still, in

imagination they could already hear, weeks in advance, trains whistling on their way to

an outside world that had no limit, and steamers hooting as they put out from the harbor

across shining seas. Next day these fancies would have passed and qualms of doubt

returned. But for the moment the whole town was on the move, quitting the dark,

lugubrious confines where it had struck its roots of stone, and setting forth at last, like a

shipload of survivors, toward a land of promise.

That night Tarrou, Rieux, Rambert, and their colleagues joined for a while the

marching crowds and they, too, felt as if they trod on air. Long after they had turned off

the main streets, even when in empty byways they walked past shuttered houses, the

joyful clamor followed them up, and because of their fatigue somehow they could not

disassociate the sorrow behind those closed shutters from the joy filling the central

streets. Thus the coming liberation had a twofold aspect, of happiness and tears.

At one moment, when the cries of exultation in the distance were swelling to a

roar, Tarrou stopped abruptly. A small, sleek form was scampering along the roadway: a

cat, the first cat any of them had seen since the spring. It stopped in the middle of the

road, hesitated, licked a paw and quickly passed it behind its right ear; then it started

forward again and vanished into the darkness.

Tarrou smiled to himself; the little old man on the balcony, too, would be pleased.

BUT in those days when the plague seemed to be retreating, slinking back to the obscure

lair from which it had stealthily emerged, at least one person in the town viewed this

retreat with consternation, if Tarrou's notes are to be trusted; and that man was Cottard.

To tell the truth, these diary notes take a rather curious turn from the date on

which the death returns began to drop. The handwriting becomes much harder to read,

this may have been due to fatigue, and the diarist jumps from one topic to another

without transition. What is more, these later notes lack the objectivity of the earlier ones;

personal considerations creep in. Thus, sandwiched between long passages dealing with

the case of Cottard, we find a brief account of the old man and the cats. Tarrou conveys

to us that the plague had in no wise lessened his appreciation of the old fellow, who

continued equally to interest him after the epidemic had run its course; unfortunately, he

could not go on interesting him, and this through no lack of good intentions on Tarrou's

part.

He had done his best to see him again. Some days after that memorable 25th of

January he stationed himself at the corner of the little street. The cats were back at their

usual places, basking in the patches of sunlight. But at the ritual hour the shutters stayed

closed. And never once did Tarrou see them open on the following days. He drew the

rather odd conclusion that the old fellow was either dead or vexed, if vexed, the reason

being that he had thought that he was right and the plague had put him in the wrong; if

dead, the question was (as in the case of the old asthmatic) had he been a saint? Tarrou

hardly thought so, but he found in the old man's case "a pointer."

"Perhaps," he wrote, "we can only reach approximations of sainthood. In which

case we must make shift with a mild, benevolent diabolism."

Interspersed with observations relating to Cottard are remarks, scattered here and

there, about Grand, he was now convalescent and had gone back to work as if nothing

had happened, and about Rieux's mother. The occasional conversations he had with her,

when living under the same roof, the old lady's attitudes, her opinions on the plague, are

all recorded in detail in the diary. Tarrou lays stress above all on Mme Rieux's self-

effacement, her way of explaining things in the simplest possible words, her predilection

for a special window at which she always sat in the early evening, holding herself rather

straight, her hands at rest, her eyes fixed on the quiet street below, until twilight filled the

room and she showed among the gathering shadows as a motionless black form which

gradually merged into the invading darkness. He remarks on the "lightness" with which

she moved from one room to the other; on her kindness, though no precise instances had

come to his notice he discerned its gentle glow in all she said and did; on the gift she had

of knowing everything without (apparently) taking thought; and lastly that, dim and silent

though she was, she quailed before no light, even the garish light of the plague. At this

point Tarrou's handwriting began to fall off oddly; indeed, the following lines were

almost illegible. And, as if in confirmation of this loss of grip upon himself, the last lines

of the entry deal, for the first time in the diary, with his personal life. "She reminds me of

my mother; what I loved most in Mother was her self-effacement, her 'dimness,' as they

say, and it's she I've always wanted to get back to. It happened eight years ago; but I can't

say she died. She only effaced herself a trifle more than usual, and when I looked round

she was no longer there."

But to return to Cottard. When the weekly totals began to show a decline, he

visited Rieux several times on various pretexts. But obviously what he really wanted was

to get from Rieux his opinion on the probable course of the epidemic.

"Do you really think it can stop like that, all of a sudden?" He was skeptical about

this, or anyhow professed to be. But the fact that he kept on asking the question seemed

to imply he was less sure than he professed to be. From the middle of January Rieux gave

him fairly optimistic answers. But these were not to Cottard's liking, and his reactions

varied on each occasion, from mere petulance to great despondency. One day the doctor

was moved to tell him that, though the statistics were highly promising, it was too soon to

say definitely that we were out of the wood.

"In other words," Cottard said promptly, "there's no knowing. It may start again at

any moment."

"Quite so. Just as it's equally possible the improvement may speed up."

Distressing to everyone else, this state of uncertainty seemed to agree with

Cottard. Tarrou observed that he would enter into conversations with shopkeepers in his

part of the town, with the obvious desire of propagating the opinion expressed by Rieux.

Indeed, he had no trouble in doing this. After the first exhilaration following the

announcement of the plague's decline had worn off, doubts had returned to many minds.

And the sight of their anxiety reassured Cottard. Just as at other times he yielded to

discouragement. "Yes," he said gloomily to Tarrou, "one of these days the gates will be

opened. And then, you'll see, they'll drop me like a live coal!"

Everyone was struck by his abrupt changes of mood during the first three weeks

of January. Though normally he spared no pains to make himself liked by neighbors and

acquaintances, now, for whole days, he deliberately cold-shouldered them. On these

occasions, so Tarrou gathered, he abruptly cut off outside contacts and retired morosely

into his shell. He was no more to be seen in restaurants or at the theater or in his favorite

cafes. However, he seemed unable to resume the obscure, humdrum life he had led before

the epidemic. He stayed in his room and had his meals sent up from a near-by restaurant.

Only at nightfall did he venture forth to make some small purchases, and on leaving the

shop he would furtively roam the darker, less-frequented streets. Once or twice Tarrou

ran into him on these occasions, but failed to elicit more than a few gruff monosyllables.

Then, from one day to another, he became sociable again, talked volubly about the

plague, asking everyone for his views on it, and mingled in the crowd with evident

pleasure.

On January 25, the day of the official announcement, Cottard went to cover again.

Two days later Tarrou came across him loitering in a side-street. When Cottard suggested

he should accompany him home, Tarrou demurred; he'd had a particularly tiring day. But

Cottard wouldn't hear of a refusal. He seemed much agitated, gesticulated freely, spoke

very rapidly and in a very loud tone. He began by asking Tarrou if he really thought the

official communique meant an end of the plague. Tarrou replied that obviously a mere

official announcement couldn't stop an epidemic, but it certainly looked as if, barring

accidents, it would shortly cease.

"Yes," Cottard said. "Barring accidents. And accidents will happen, won't they?"

Tarrou pointed out that the authorities had allowed for that possibility by refusing

to open the gates for another fortnight.

"And very wise they were!" Cottard exclaimed in the same excited tone. "By the

way things are going, I should say they'll have to eat their words."

Tarrou agreed this might be so; still, he thought it wiser to count on the opening

of the gates and a return to normal life in the near future.

"Granted!" Cottard rejoined. "But what do you mean by 'a return to normal life'?"

Tarrou smiled. "New films at the picture-houses."

But Cottard didn't smile. Was it supposed, he asked, that the plague wouldn't have

changed anything and the life of the town would go on as before, exactly as if nothing

had happened? Tarrou thought that the plague would have changed things and not

changed them; naturally our fellow citizens' strongest desire was, and would be, to

behave as if nothing had changed and for that reason nothing would be changed, in a

sense. But, to look at it from another angle, one can't forget everything, however great

one's wish to do so; the plague was bound to leave traces, anyhow, in people's hearts.

To this Cottard rejoined curtly that he wasn't interested in hearts; indeed, they

were the last thing he bothered about. What interested him was knowing whether the

whole administration wouldn't be changed, lock, stock, and barrel; whether, for instance,

the public services would function as before. Tarrou had to admit he had no inside

knowledge on the matter; his personal theory was that after the upheaval caused by the

epidemic, there would be some delay in getting these services under way again. Also, it

seemed likely that all sorts of new problems would arise and necessitate at least some

reorganization of the administrative system.

Cottard nodded. "Yes, that's quite on the cards; in fact everyone will have to make

a fresh start."

They were nearing Cottard's house. He now seemed more cheerful, determined to

take a rosier view of the future. Obviously he was picturing the town entering on a new

lease of life, blotting out its past and starting again with a clean sheet.

"So that's that," Tarrou smiled. "Quite likely things will pan out all right for you,

too, who can say? It'll be a new life for all of us, in a manner of speaking."

They were shaking hands at the door of the apartment house where Cottard lived.

"Quite right!" Cottard was growing more and more excited. "That would be a

great idea, starting again with a clean sheet."

Suddenly from the lightless hall two men emerged. Tarrou had hardly time to hear

his companion mutter: "Now, what do those birds want?" when the men in question, who

looked like subordinate government employees in their best clothes, cut in with an

inquiry if his name was Cottard. With a stifled exclamation Cottard swung round and

dashed off into the darkness. Taken by surprise, Tarrou and the two men gazed blankly at

each other for some moments.

Then Tarrou asked them what they wanted. In noncommittal tones they informed

him that they wanted "some information," and walked away, unhurrying, in the direction

Cottard had taken.

On his return home Tarrou wrote out an account of this peculiar incident,

following it up with a "Feeling very tired tonight", which is confirmed by his handwriting

in this entry. He added that he had still much to do, but that was no reason for not

"holding himself in readiness," and he questioned if he were ready. As a sort of

postscript, and, in fact, it is here that Tarrou's diary ends, he noted that there is always a

certain hour of the day and of the night when a man's courage is at its lowest ebb, and it

was that hour only that he feared.

When next day, a few days before the date fixed for the opening of the gates, Dr.

Rieux came home at noon, he was wondering if the telegram he was expecting had

arrived. Though his days were no less strenuous than at the height of the epidemic, the

prospect of imminent release had obliterated his fatigue. Hope had returned and with it a

new zest for life. No man can live on the stretch all the time, with his energy and

willpower strained to the breaking-point, and it is a joy to be able to relax at last and

loosen nerves and muscles that were braced for the struggle. If the telegram, too, that he

awaited brought good news, Rieux would be able to make a fresh start. Indeed, he had a

feeling that everyone in those days was making a fresh start.

He walked past the concierge's room in the hall. The new man, old Michel's

successor, his face pressed to the window looking on the hall, gave him a smile.

As he went up the stairs, the man's face, pale with exhaustion and privation, but

smiling, hovered before his eyes.

Yes, he'd make a fresh start, once the period of "abstractions" was over, and with

any luck? He was opening the door with these thoughts in his mind when he saw his

mother coming down the hall to meet him. M. Tarrou, she told him, wasn't well. He had

risen at the usual time, but did not feel up to going out and had returned to bed. Mme

Rieux felt worried about him.

"Quite likely it's nothing serious," her son said.

Tarrou was lying on his back, his heavy head deeply indenting the pillow, the

coverlet bulging above his massive chest. His head was aching and his temperature up.

The symptoms weren't very definite, he told Rieux, but they might well be those of

plague.

After examining him Rieux said: "No, there's nothing definite as yet."

But Tarrou also suffered from a raging thirst, and in the hallway the doctor told

his mother that it might be plague.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Surely that's not possible, not now!" And after a moment

added: "Let's keep him here, Bernard."

Rieux pondered. "Strictly speaking, I've no right to do that," he said doubtfully.

"Still, the gates will be opened quite soon. If you weren't here, I think I'd take it on

myself."

"Bernard, let him stay, and let me stay too. You know, I've just had another

inoculation."

The doctor pointed out that Tarrou, too, had had inoculations, though it was

possible, tired as he was, he'd overlooked the last one or omitted to take the necessary

precautions.

Rieux was going to the surgery as he spoke, and when he returned to the bedroom

Tarrou noticed that he had a box of the big ampoules containing the serum.

"Ah, so it is that," he said.

"Not necessarily; but we mustn't run any risks."

Without replying Tarrou extended his arm and submitted to the prolonged

injections he himself had so often administered to others.

"We'll judge better this evening." Rieux looked Tarrou in the eyes.

"But what about isolating me, Rieux?"