the unusual events described in this chronicle urred in 194- at oran.everyone agreed that, considering their somewhat extraordinary character, they were out of ce there.for its ordinariness is what strikes one first about the town of oran, which is merely arge french port on the algerian coast, headquarters of the prefect of a french department.
the town itself, let us admit, is ugly.it has a smug, cid air and you need time to discover what it is that makes it different from so many business centers in other parts of the world.how to conjure up a picture, for instance, of a town without pigeons, without any trees or gardens, where you never hear the beat of wings or the rustle of leaves—a thoroughly negative ce, in short?the seasons are discriminated only in the sky.all that tells you of spring’sing is the feel of the air, or the baskets of flowers brought in from the suburbs by peddlers; it’s a spring cried in the marketces.during the summer the sun bakes the houses bone-dry, sprinkles our walls with grayish dust, and you have no option but to survive those days of fire indoors, behind closed shutters.in autumn, on the other hand, we have deluges of mud.only winter brings really pleasant weather.
perhaps the easiest way of making a town’s acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, 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.the truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich.their chief interest is inmerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, “doing business.”naturally they don’t eschew such simpler pleasures as love-making, seabathing, going to the pictures.but, very sensibly, they reserve these pastimes for saturday afternoons and sundays and employ the rest of the week in making money, as much as possible.in the evening, on leaving the office, they forgather, at an hour that never varies, in the cafes, stroll the same boulevard, or take the air on their balconies.the passions of the young are violent and short-lived; the vices of older men seldom range beyond an addiction to bowling, to banquets and “socials,” or clubs whererge sums change hands on the fall of a card.
it will be said, no doubt, that these habits are not peculiar to our town; really all our contemporaries are much the same.certainly nothing ismoner nowadays than to see people working from morn till night and then proceeding to fritter away at card-tables, in cafes and in small-talk what time is left for living.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.oran, however, seems to be a town without intimations; in other words,pletely modern.hence i see no need to dwell on the manner of loving in our town.the men and women consume one another rapidly in what is called “the act of love,” or else settle down to a mild habit of conjugality.we seldom find a mean between these extremes.that, too, is not exceptional.at oran, as elsewhere, forck of time and thinking, people have to love one another without knowing much about it.
what is more exceptional in our town is the difficulty one may experience there in dying.“difficulty,” perhaps, is not the right word, “difort” woulde nearer.being ill’s never agreeable but there are towns that stand by you, so to speak, when you are sick; in which you can, after a fashion, let yourself go.an invalid needs small attentions, he likes to have something to rely on, and that’s natural enough.but at oran the violent extremes of temperature, the exigencies of business, the uninspiring surroundings, the sudden nightfalls, and the very nature of its pleasures call for good health.an invalid feels out of it there.think what it must be for a dying man, trapped behind hundreds of walls all sizzling with heat, while the whole poption, sitting in cafes or hanging on the telephone, is discussing shipments, bills ofding, discounts!it will then be obvious what difort attends death, even modern death, when it ways you under such conditions in a dry ce.
these somewhat haphazard observations may give a fair idea of what our town is like.however, we must not exaggerate.really, all that was to be conveyed was the banality of the town’s appearance and of life in it.but you can get through the days there without trouble, once you have formed habits.and since habits are precisely what our town encourages, all is for the best.viewed from this angle, its life is not particrly exciting; that must be admitted.but, at least, social unrest is quite unknown among us.and our frank-spoken, amiable, and industrious citizens have always inspired a reasonable esteem in visitors.treeless, mour-less, soulless, the town of oran ends by seeming restful and, after a while, you gocently to sleep there.
it is only fair to add that oran is grafted on to a uniquendscape, in the center of a bare teau, 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.
such being the normal life of oran, it will be easily understood that our fellow citizens had not the faintest reason to apprehend the incidents that took ce in the spring of the year in question and were (as we subsequently realized) premonitory signs of the grave events we are to chronicle.to some, these events will seem quite natural; to others, all but incredible.but, obviously, a narrator cannot take ount of these differences of outlook.his business is only to say: “this is what happened,” when he knows that it actually did happen, that it closely affected the life of a whole popce, and that there are thousands of eyewitnesses who can appraise in their hearts the truth of what he writes.
in any case the narrator (whose identity will be made known in due course) would have little im topetence for a task like this, had not chance put him in the way of gathering much information, and had he not been, by the force of things, closely involved in all that he proposes to narrate.this is his justification for ying the part of a historian.naturally, a historian, even an amateur, always has data, personal or at second hand, to guide him.the present narrator has three kinds of data: first, what he saw himself; secondly, the ounts of other eyewitnesses (thanks to the part he yed, he was enabled to learn their personal impressions from all those figuring in this chronicle); and,stly, documents that subsequently came into his hands.he proposes to draw on these records whenever this seems desirable, and to employ them as he thinks best.he also proposes...
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but perhaps the time hase to drop preliminaries and cautionary remarks and tounch into the narrative proper.the ount of the first days needs giving in some detail.
chapter 2
michel’s death marked, one might say, the end of the first period, that of bewildering portents, and the beginning of another, rtively more trying, in which the perplexity of the early days gradually gave ce to panic.reviewing that first phase in the light of subsequent events, our townsfolk realized that they had never dreamed it possible that our little town should be chosen out for the scene of such grotesque happenings as the wholesale death of rats in broad daylight or the decease of concierges through exotic mdies.in this respect they were wrong, and their views obviously called for revision.still, if things had gone thus far and no farther, force of habit would doubtless have gained the day, as usual.but other members of ourmunity, not all menials or poor people, were to follow the path down which m. michel had led the way.and it was then that fear, and with fear serious reflection, began.
however, before entering on a detailed ount of the next phase, the narrator proposes to give the opinion of another witness on the period that has been described.jean tarrou, whose acquaintance we have already made at the beginning of this narrative, hade to oran some weeks before and was staying in a big hotel in the center of the town.apparently he had private means and was not engaged in business.but though he gradually became a familiar figure in our midst, no one knew where he hailed from or what had brought him to oran.he was often to be seen in public and at the beginning of spring was seen on one or other of the beaches almost every day; obviously he was fond of swimming.good-humored, always ready with a smile, he seemed an addict of all normal pleasures without being their ve.in fact, the only habit he was known to have was that of cultivating the society of the spanish dancers and musicians who abound in our town.
his notebooksprise a sort of chronicle of those strange early days we all lived through.but an unusual type of chronicle, since the writer seems to make a point of understatement, and at first sight we might almost imagine that tarrou had a habit of observing events and people through the wrong end of a telescope.in those chaotic times he set himself to recording the history of what the normal historian passes over.obviously we may deplore this curious kink in his character and suspect in him ack of proper feeling.all the same, it is undeniable that these notebooks, which form a sort of discursive diary, supply the chronicler of the period with a host of seeming-trivial details which yet have their importance, and whose very oddity should be enough to prevent the reader from passing hasty judgment on this singr man.
the earliest entries made by jean tarrou synchronize with hising to oran.from the outset they reveal a paradoxical satisfaction at the discovery of a town so intrinsically ugly.we find in them a minute description of the two bronze lions adorning the municipal office, and appropriatements on theck of trees, the hideousness of the houses, and the absurdy-out of the town.tarrou sprinkles his descriptions with bits of conversation overheard in streetcars and in the streets, never adding ament on them except—thises somewhatter—in the report of a dialogue concerning a man named camps.it was a chat between two streetcar conductors.
“you knew camps, didn’t you?” asked one of them.“camps?a tall chap with a ck mustache?”“that’s him.a switchman.”“ah yes, i remember now.”“well, he’s dead.”“oh?when did he die?”“after that business about the rats.”“you don’t say so!what did he die of?”“i couldn’t say exactly.some kind of fever.of course, he never was what you might call fit.he got abscesses under the arms, and they did him in, it seems.”“still, he didn’t look that different from other people.”“i wouldn’t say that.he had a weak chest and he used to y the trombone in the town band.it’s hard on the lungs, blowing a trombone.”
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“ah, if you’ve got weak lungs, it don’t do you any good, blowing down a big instrument like that.”
after jotting down this dialogue tarrou went on to specte why camps had joined a band when it was so clearly inadvisable, and what obscure motive had led him to risk his life for the sake of parading the streets on sunday mornings.
we gather that tarrou was agreeably impressed by a little scene that took ce daily on the balcony of a house facing his window.his room at the hotel looked on to a small side street and there were always several cats sleeping in the shadow of the walls.every day, soon after lunch, at a time when most people stayed indoors, enjoying a siesta, a dapper little old man stepped out on the balcony on the other side of the street.he had a soldierly bearing, very erect, and affected a military style of dressing; his snow-white hair was always brushed to perfect smoothness.leaning over the balcony he would call: “pussy! pussy!” in a voice at once haughty and endearing.the cats blinked up at him with sleep-pale eyes, but made no move as yet.he then proceeded to tear some paper into scraps and let them fall into the street; interested by the fluttering shower of white butterflies, the cats came forward, lifting tentative paws toward thest scraps of paper.then, taking careful aim, the old man would spit vigorously at the cats and, whenever a liquid missile hit the quarry, would beam with delightstly, tarrou seemed to have been quite fascinated by themercial character of the town, whose aspect, activities, and even pleasures all seemed to be dictated by considerations of business.this idiosyncrasy—the term he uses in his diary—was warmly approved of by tarrou; indeed, one of his appreciativements ends on the exmation: “atst!”
these are the only passages in which our visitor’s record, at this period, strikes a seemingly personal note.its significance and the earnestness behind it might escape the reader on a casual perusal.for example, after describing how the discovery of a dead rat led the hotel cashier to make an error in his bill, tarrou added: “query: how contrive not to waste one’s time?answer: by being fully aware of it all the while.ways in which this can be done: by spending one’s days on an uneasy chair in a dentist’s waiting-room; by remaining on one’s balcony all a sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in anguage one doesn’t know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth.”
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then, immediately following these entricities of thought and expression, wee on a detailed description of the streetcar service in the town, the structure of the cars, their indeterminate color, their unvarying dirtiness—and he concludes his observations with a “very odd,” which exins—nothing.
so much by way of introduction to tarrou’sments on the phenomenon of the rats.
“the little old fellow opposite is quite disconste today.there are no more cats.the sight of all those dead rats strewn about the street may have excited their hunting instinct; anyhow, they all have vanished.to my thinking, there’s no question of their eating the dead rats.mine, i remember, turned up their noses at dead things.all the same, they’re probably busy hunting in the cers—hence the old boy’s plight.his hair isn’t as well brushed as usual, and he looks less alert, less military.you can see he is worried.after a few moments he went back into the room.but first he spat once—on emptiness.
“in town today a streetcar was stopped because a dead rat had been found in it.(query: how did it get there?)two or three women promptly alighted.the rat was thrown out.the car went on.
“the night watchman at the hotel, a level-headed man, assured me that all these rats meant troubleing.‘when the rat leave a ship...’ i replied that this held good for ships, but for towns it hadn’t yet been demonstrated.but he stuck to his point.i asked what sort of ‘trouble’ we might expect.that he couldn’t say; disasters alwayse out of the blue.but he wouldn’t be surprised if there were an earthquake brewing.i admitted that was possible, and then he asked if the prospect didn’t rm me.‘the only thing i’m interested in,’ i told him, ‘is acquiring peace of mind.’ he understood me perfectly.
“i find a family that has its meals in this hotel quite interesting.the father is a tall, thin man, always dressed in ck and wearing a starched cor.the top of his head is bald, with two tufts of gray hair on each side.his small, beady eyes, narrow nose, and hard, straight mouth make him look like a well-brought-up owl.he is always first at the door of the restaurant, stands aside to let his wife—a tiny woman, like a ck mouse—go in, and thenes in himself with a small boy and girl, dressed like performing poodles, at his heels.when they are at the table he remains standing till his wife is seated and only then the two poodles can perch themselves on their chairs.he uses no terms of endearment to his family, addresses politely spiteful remarks to his wife, and bluntly tells the kids what he thinks of them.‘nicole, you’re behaving quite disgracefully.’
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“the little girl is on the brink of tears—which is as it should be.this morning the small boy was all excitement about the rats, and started saying something on the subject.
“‘philippe, one doesn’t talk of rats at table.for the future i forbid you to use the word.’ ‘your father’s right,’ approved the mouse.
“the two poodles buried their noses in their tes, and the owl acknowledged thanks by a curt, perfunctory nod.
“this excellent example notwithstanding, everybody in town is talking about the rats, and the local newspaper has taken a hand.the town-topics column, usually very varied, is now devoted exclusively to a campaign against the local authorities.‘are our city fathers aware that the decaying bodies of these rodents constitute a grave danger to the poption?’ the manager of the hotel can talk of nothing else.but he has a personal grievance, too; that dead rats should be found in the elevator of a three-star hotel seems to him the end of all things.to console him, i said: ‘but, you know, everybody’s in the same boat.’
‘that’s just it,’ he replied.‘now we’re like everybody else.’
“he was the first to tell me about the outbreak of this queer kind of fever which is causing much rm.one of his chambermaids has got it.
‘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 told him so....”
from this point onwards tarrou’s entries deal in some detail with the curious fever that was causing much anxiety among the public.when noting that the little old man, now that the rats had ceased appearing, had regained his cats and was studiously perfecting his shooting, tarrou adds that a dozen or so cases of this fever were known to have urred, and most had ended fatally.
for the light it may throw on the narrative that follows, tarrou’s description of dr. rieux may be suitably inserted here.so far as the narrator can judge, it is fairly urate.
“looks about thirty-five.moderate height.broad shoulders.almost rectangr face.dark, steady eyes, but prominent jaws.a biggish, well-modeled nose.ck hair, cropped very close.a curving mouth with thick, usually tight-set lips.with his tanned skin, the ck down on his hands and arms, the dark but bing suits he always wears, he reminds one of a sicilian peasant.
“he walks quickly.when crossing a street, he steps off the sidewalk without changing his pace, but two out of three times makes a little hop when he steps on to the sidewalk on the other side.he is absentminded and, when driving his car, often leaves his side-signals on after he has turned a corner.always bareheaded.looks knowledgeable.”
chapter 3
tarrou’s figures were correct.dr. rieux was only too well aware of the serious turn things had taken.after seeing to the istion of the concierge’s body, he had rung up richard and asked what he made of these inguinal-fever cases.
“i can make nothing of them,” richard confessed.“there have been two deaths, one in forty-eight hours, the other in three days.and the second patient showed all the signs of convalescence when i visited him on the second day.”
“please let me know if you have other cases,” rieux said.
he rang up some other colleagues.as a result of these inquiries he gathered that there had been some twenty cases of the same type within thest few days.almost all had ended fatally.he then advised richard, who was chairman of the local medical association, to have any fresh cases put into istion wards.
“sorry,” richard said, “but i can’t do anything about it.an order to that effect can be issued only by the prefect.anyhow, what grounds have you for supposing there’s danger of contagion?”
the town itself, let us admit, is ugly.it has a smug, cid air and you need time to discover what it is that makes it different from so many business centers in other parts of the world.how to conjure up a picture, for instance, of a town without pigeons, without any trees or gardens, where you never hear the beat of wings or the rustle of leaves—a thoroughly negative ce, in short?the seasons are discriminated only in the sky.all that tells you of spring’sing is the feel of the air, or the baskets of flowers brought in from the suburbs by peddlers; it’s a spring cried in the marketces.during the summer the sun bakes the houses bone-dry, sprinkles our walls with grayish dust, and you have no option but to survive those days of fire indoors, behind closed shutters.in autumn, on the other hand, we have deluges of mud.only winter brings really pleasant weather.
perhaps the easiest way of making a town’s acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, 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.the truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich.their chief interest is inmerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, “doing business.”naturally they don’t eschew such simpler pleasures as love-making, seabathing, going to the pictures.but, very sensibly, they reserve these pastimes for saturday afternoons and sundays and employ the rest of the week in making money, as much as possible.in the evening, on leaving the office, they forgather, at an hour that never varies, in the cafes, stroll the same boulevard, or take the air on their balconies.the passions of the young are violent and short-lived; the vices of older men seldom range beyond an addiction to bowling, to banquets and “socials,” or clubs whererge sums change hands on the fall of a card.
it will be said, no doubt, that these habits are not peculiar to our town; really all our contemporaries are much the same.certainly nothing ismoner nowadays than to see people working from morn till night and then proceeding to fritter away at card-tables, in cafes and in small-talk what time is left for living.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.oran, however, seems to be a town without intimations; in other words,pletely modern.hence i see no need to dwell on the manner of loving in our town.the men and women consume one another rapidly in what is called “the act of love,” or else settle down to a mild habit of conjugality.we seldom find a mean between these extremes.that, too, is not exceptional.at oran, as elsewhere, forck of time and thinking, people have to love one another without knowing much about it.
what is more exceptional in our town is the difficulty one may experience there in dying.“difficulty,” perhaps, is not the right word, “difort” woulde nearer.being ill’s never agreeable but there are towns that stand by you, so to speak, when you are sick; in which you can, after a fashion, let yourself go.an invalid needs small attentions, he likes to have something to rely on, and that’s natural enough.but at oran the violent extremes of temperature, the exigencies of business, the uninspiring surroundings, the sudden nightfalls, and the very nature of its pleasures call for good health.an invalid feels out of it there.think what it must be for a dying man, trapped behind hundreds of walls all sizzling with heat, while the whole poption, sitting in cafes or hanging on the telephone, is discussing shipments, bills ofding, discounts!it will then be obvious what difort attends death, even modern death, when it ways you under such conditions in a dry ce.
these somewhat haphazard observations may give a fair idea of what our town is like.however, we must not exaggerate.really, all that was to be conveyed was the banality of the town’s appearance and of life in it.but you can get through the days there without trouble, once you have formed habits.and since habits are precisely what our town encourages, all is for the best.viewed from this angle, its life is not particrly exciting; that must be admitted.but, at least, social unrest is quite unknown among us.and our frank-spoken, amiable, and industrious citizens have always inspired a reasonable esteem in visitors.treeless, mour-less, soulless, the town of oran ends by seeming restful and, after a while, you gocently to sleep there.
it is only fair to add that oran is grafted on to a uniquendscape, in the center of a bare teau, 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.
such being the normal life of oran, it will be easily understood that our fellow citizens had not the faintest reason to apprehend the incidents that took ce in the spring of the year in question and were (as we subsequently realized) premonitory signs of the grave events we are to chronicle.to some, these events will seem quite natural; to others, all but incredible.but, obviously, a narrator cannot take ount of these differences of outlook.his business is only to say: “this is what happened,” when he knows that it actually did happen, that it closely affected the life of a whole popce, and that there are thousands of eyewitnesses who can appraise in their hearts the truth of what he writes.
in any case the narrator (whose identity will be made known in due course) would have little im topetence for a task like this, had not chance put him in the way of gathering much information, and had he not been, by the force of things, closely involved in all that he proposes to narrate.this is his justification for ying the part of a historian.naturally, a historian, even an amateur, always has data, personal or at second hand, to guide him.the present narrator has three kinds of data: first, what he saw himself; secondly, the ounts of other eyewitnesses (thanks to the part he yed, he was enabled to learn their personal impressions from all those figuring in this chronicle); and,stly, documents that subsequently came into his hands.he proposes to draw on these records whenever this seems desirable, and to employ them as he thinks best.he also proposes...
這章沒有結束^.^，請點擊下一頁繼續閱讀！
but perhaps the time hase to drop preliminaries and cautionary remarks and tounch into the narrative proper.the ount of the first days needs giving in some detail.
chapter 2
michel’s death marked, one might say, the end of the first period, that of bewildering portents, and the beginning of another, rtively more trying, in which the perplexity of the early days gradually gave ce to panic.reviewing that first phase in the light of subsequent events, our townsfolk realized that they had never dreamed it possible that our little town should be chosen out for the scene of such grotesque happenings as the wholesale death of rats in broad daylight or the decease of concierges through exotic mdies.in this respect they were wrong, and their views obviously called for revision.still, if things had gone thus far and no farther, force of habit would doubtless have gained the day, as usual.but other members of ourmunity, not all menials or poor people, were to follow the path down which m. michel had led the way.and it was then that fear, and with fear serious reflection, began.
however, before entering on a detailed ount of the next phase, the narrator proposes to give the opinion of another witness on the period that has been described.jean tarrou, whose acquaintance we have already made at the beginning of this narrative, hade to oran some weeks before and was staying in a big hotel in the center of the town.apparently he had private means and was not engaged in business.but though he gradually became a familiar figure in our midst, no one knew where he hailed from or what had brought him to oran.he was often to be seen in public and at the beginning of spring was seen on one or other of the beaches almost every day; obviously he was fond of swimming.good-humored, always ready with a smile, he seemed an addict of all normal pleasures without being their ve.in fact, the only habit he was known to have was that of cultivating the society of the spanish dancers and musicians who abound in our town.
his notebooksprise a sort of chronicle of those strange early days we all lived through.but an unusual type of chronicle, since the writer seems to make a point of understatement, and at first sight we might almost imagine that tarrou had a habit of observing events and people through the wrong end of a telescope.in those chaotic times he set himself to recording the history of what the normal historian passes over.obviously we may deplore this curious kink in his character and suspect in him ack of proper feeling.all the same, it is undeniable that these notebooks, which form a sort of discursive diary, supply the chronicler of the period with a host of seeming-trivial details which yet have their importance, and whose very oddity should be enough to prevent the reader from passing hasty judgment on this singr man.
the earliest entries made by jean tarrou synchronize with hising to oran.from the outset they reveal a paradoxical satisfaction at the discovery of a town so intrinsically ugly.we find in them a minute description of the two bronze lions adorning the municipal office, and appropriatements on theck of trees, the hideousness of the houses, and the absurdy-out of the town.tarrou sprinkles his descriptions with bits of conversation overheard in streetcars and in the streets, never adding ament on them except—thises somewhatter—in the report of a dialogue concerning a man named camps.it was a chat between two streetcar conductors.
“you knew camps, didn’t you?” asked one of them.“camps?a tall chap with a ck mustache?”“that’s him.a switchman.”“ah yes, i remember now.”“well, he’s dead.”“oh?when did he die?”“after that business about the rats.”“you don’t say so!what did he die of?”“i couldn’t say exactly.some kind of fever.of course, he never was what you might call fit.he got abscesses under the arms, and they did him in, it seems.”“still, he didn’t look that different from other people.”“i wouldn’t say that.he had a weak chest and he used to y the trombone in the town band.it’s hard on the lungs, blowing a trombone.”
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“ah, if you’ve got weak lungs, it don’t do you any good, blowing down a big instrument like that.”
after jotting down this dialogue tarrou went on to specte why camps had joined a band when it was so clearly inadvisable, and what obscure motive had led him to risk his life for the sake of parading the streets on sunday mornings.
we gather that tarrou was agreeably impressed by a little scene that took ce daily on the balcony of a house facing his window.his room at the hotel looked on to a small side street and there were always several cats sleeping in the shadow of the walls.every day, soon after lunch, at a time when most people stayed indoors, enjoying a siesta, a dapper little old man stepped out on the balcony on the other side of the street.he had a soldierly bearing, very erect, and affected a military style of dressing; his snow-white hair was always brushed to perfect smoothness.leaning over the balcony he would call: “pussy! pussy!” in a voice at once haughty and endearing.the cats blinked up at him with sleep-pale eyes, but made no move as yet.he then proceeded to tear some paper into scraps and let them fall into the street; interested by the fluttering shower of white butterflies, the cats came forward, lifting tentative paws toward thest scraps of paper.then, taking careful aim, the old man would spit vigorously at the cats and, whenever a liquid missile hit the quarry, would beam with delightstly, tarrou seemed to have been quite fascinated by themercial character of the town, whose aspect, activities, and even pleasures all seemed to be dictated by considerations of business.this idiosyncrasy—the term he uses in his diary—was warmly approved of by tarrou; indeed, one of his appreciativements ends on the exmation: “atst!”
these are the only passages in which our visitor’s record, at this period, strikes a seemingly personal note.its significance and the earnestness behind it might escape the reader on a casual perusal.for example, after describing how the discovery of a dead rat led the hotel cashier to make an error in his bill, tarrou added: “query: how contrive not to waste one’s time?answer: by being fully aware of it all the while.ways in which this can be done: by spending one’s days on an uneasy chair in a dentist’s waiting-room; by remaining on one’s balcony all a sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in anguage one doesn’t know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth.”
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then, immediately following these entricities of thought and expression, wee on a detailed description of the streetcar service in the town, the structure of the cars, their indeterminate color, their unvarying dirtiness—and he concludes his observations with a “very odd,” which exins—nothing.
so much by way of introduction to tarrou’sments on the phenomenon of the rats.
“the little old fellow opposite is quite disconste today.there are no more cats.the sight of all those dead rats strewn about the street may have excited their hunting instinct; anyhow, they all have vanished.to my thinking, there’s no question of their eating the dead rats.mine, i remember, turned up their noses at dead things.all the same, they’re probably busy hunting in the cers—hence the old boy’s plight.his hair isn’t as well brushed as usual, and he looks less alert, less military.you can see he is worried.after a few moments he went back into the room.but first he spat once—on emptiness.
“in town today a streetcar was stopped because a dead rat had been found in it.(query: how did it get there?)two or three women promptly alighted.the rat was thrown out.the car went on.
“the night watchman at the hotel, a level-headed man, assured me that all these rats meant troubleing.‘when the rat leave a ship...’ i replied that this held good for ships, but for towns it hadn’t yet been demonstrated.but he stuck to his point.i asked what sort of ‘trouble’ we might expect.that he couldn’t say; disasters alwayse out of the blue.but he wouldn’t be surprised if there were an earthquake brewing.i admitted that was possible, and then he asked if the prospect didn’t rm me.‘the only thing i’m interested in,’ i told him, ‘is acquiring peace of mind.’ he understood me perfectly.
“i find a family that has its meals in this hotel quite interesting.the father is a tall, thin man, always dressed in ck and wearing a starched cor.the top of his head is bald, with two tufts of gray hair on each side.his small, beady eyes, narrow nose, and hard, straight mouth make him look like a well-brought-up owl.he is always first at the door of the restaurant, stands aside to let his wife—a tiny woman, like a ck mouse—go in, and thenes in himself with a small boy and girl, dressed like performing poodles, at his heels.when they are at the table he remains standing till his wife is seated and only then the two poodles can perch themselves on their chairs.he uses no terms of endearment to his family, addresses politely spiteful remarks to his wife, and bluntly tells the kids what he thinks of them.‘nicole, you’re behaving quite disgracefully.’
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“the little girl is on the brink of tears—which is as it should be.this morning the small boy was all excitement about the rats, and started saying something on the subject.
“‘philippe, one doesn’t talk of rats at table.for the future i forbid you to use the word.’ ‘your father’s right,’ approved the mouse.
“the two poodles buried their noses in their tes, and the owl acknowledged thanks by a curt, perfunctory nod.
“this excellent example notwithstanding, everybody in town is talking about the rats, and the local newspaper has taken a hand.the town-topics column, usually very varied, is now devoted exclusively to a campaign against the local authorities.‘are our city fathers aware that the decaying bodies of these rodents constitute a grave danger to the poption?’ the manager of the hotel can talk of nothing else.but he has a personal grievance, too; that dead rats should be found in the elevator of a three-star hotel seems to him the end of all things.to console him, i said: ‘but, you know, everybody’s in the same boat.’
‘that’s just it,’ he replied.‘now we’re like everybody else.’
“he was the first to tell me about the outbreak of this queer kind of fever which is causing much rm.one of his chambermaids has got it.
‘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 told him so....”
from this point onwards tarrou’s entries deal in some detail with the curious fever that was causing much anxiety among the public.when noting that the little old man, now that the rats had ceased appearing, had regained his cats and was studiously perfecting his shooting, tarrou adds that a dozen or so cases of this fever were known to have urred, and most had ended fatally.
for the light it may throw on the narrative that follows, tarrou’s description of dr. rieux may be suitably inserted here.so far as the narrator can judge, it is fairly urate.
“looks about thirty-five.moderate height.broad shoulders.almost rectangr face.dark, steady eyes, but prominent jaws.a biggish, well-modeled nose.ck hair, cropped very close.a curving mouth with thick, usually tight-set lips.with his tanned skin, the ck down on his hands and arms, the dark but bing suits he always wears, he reminds one of a sicilian peasant.
“he walks quickly.when crossing a street, he steps off the sidewalk without changing his pace, but two out of three times makes a little hop when he steps on to the sidewalk on the other side.he is absentminded and, when driving his car, often leaves his side-signals on after he has turned a corner.always bareheaded.looks knowledgeable.”
chapter 3
tarrou’s figures were correct.dr. rieux was only too well aware of the serious turn things had taken.after seeing to the istion of the concierge’s body, he had rung up richard and asked what he made of these inguinal-fever cases.
“i can make nothing of them,” richard confessed.“there have been two deaths, one in forty-eight hours, the other in three days.and the second patient showed all the signs of convalescence when i visited him on the second day.”
“please let me know if you have other cases,” rieux said.
he rang up some other colleagues.as a result of these inquiries he gathered that there had been some twenty cases of the same type within thest few days.almost all had ended fatally.he then advised richard, who was chairman of the local medical association, to have any fresh cases put into istion wards.
“sorry,” richard said, “but i can’t do anything about it.an order to that effect can be issued only by the prefect.anyhow, what grounds have you for supposing there’s danger of contagion?”