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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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