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.

some stir in Algiers. A young commercial employee had killed an Algerian on a beach.

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

Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world.

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.

and what obscure motive had led him to risk his life for the sake of parading the streets on Sunday mornings.

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

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.

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