ince joining Rieux’s band of workers Paneloux had spent his entire time in hospitals and places where he came in contactS with plague. He had elected for the place among his fellow workers that he judged incumbent upon him—in the forefront of the ght.
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 Justied 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 rst 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 naïvely 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 indenitely, 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 rms were quick to realize the prot 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 gures 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 aairs 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 Peneloux 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 lling 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 gentler, 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 rmer 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 rst shock of the visitation, we might not have listened with due heed. What he, Father Paneloux, had said in his rst 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 dierence between them. The diculty began when we looked into the nature of evil, and among things evil he included human suering. 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 suering. And, truth to tell, nothing was more important on earth than a child’s suering, the horror it inspires in us, and the reasons we must nd 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 suerings 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 suering? He who asserted that would not be a true Christian, a follower of the Master who knew all the pangs of suering in his body and his soul. No, he, Father Paneloux, would keep faith with that great symbol of all suering, 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 indierence 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 suerings of children were our bread of aiction, but without this bread our souls would die of spiritual hunger.
The shuing 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 indels 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 suering 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 ight. 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 xed 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 ed.
And, bringing down his st 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 gure 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 ung 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 suering 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 ash 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 agstones 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 bueted 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 diculty 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 briey 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 eorts 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 ung at him over her shoulder. It was on one such evening that
he felt, like a ood 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 diculty in breathing and looked more ushed 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 suering 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, oered 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 conned 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 o 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 semisolid substance that was choking him. After each unavailing eort, 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 xity 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 stied 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 ush 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 briey that Paneloux was right, but it was probably too late.
The Father welcomed him with the same air of complete indierence. Rieux examined him and was surprised to nd 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 specic 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 diculty 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 crucix 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 crucix. 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.”
