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,

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.

‘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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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