es, the plague gave short shrift indeed, and they must set their shoulders to the wheel again. Throughout December itY smoldered in the chests of our townspeople, fed the res 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 rst 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 benecial. 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 ght; 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 oce to protest and had been rudely treated; they had told her that the oce 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 oces 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 x 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 eciency to bear on every problem. Rambert conded 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 rst 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 st 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 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 shamefaced 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 owing 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 owed, 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 reection 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 suered with Grand’s sorrow, and what lled 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 eort 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 at on the pavement, his face stained with the tears that went on owing. Some people who were approaching stopped abruptly and watched the scene from a little
way o, 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 xedly at the scanty re 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 ame-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 ickered across the haggard face. “If I pull through, Doctor—hats o!” 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 horried by the rapid change that had come over his face, ravaged by the res 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 fty 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, simplications or elaborations.
Persistently the month of May, the lady on horseback, the avenues of the Bois recurred, regrouped in dierent 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 ne morning in May, a slim young horsewoman might have been seen riding a glossy sorrel mare along the avenues of the Bois,
among the owers …”
“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 replace and dropped the sheets on the dying re. It blazed up, and there was a sudden ood of light, a eeting 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 baed 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 gures that were announced every Monday. They showed a decrease.
