‘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 can’t say I really know him, but one’s got to help a neighbor, hasn’t one?”

A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure;

“I’m so glad to be with you again, Bernard,” she added. “The rats can’t change that, anyhow.”

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.

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.

What’s important is for you to go out a bit. It’s a mistake staying indoors too much.”

“The important thing,” Castel replied, “isn’t the soundness or otherwise of the argument, but for it to make you think.”

Like Cottard he felt a need for friendly contacts, human warmth.