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

You must picture the consternation of our little town, hitherto so tranquil, and now, out of the blue, shaken to its core, like a quite healthy man who all of a sudden feels his temperature shoot up and the blood seething like wildfire in his veins.

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,

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

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.

Nevertheless there still exist towns and countries where people have now and then an inkling of something different. In general it doesn’t change their lives. Still, they have had an intimation, and that’s so much to the good.

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.

‘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.

half-obliterated words: “flowery avenues.”