“ ‘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 alarm.
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 occurred, 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 accurate.
“Looks about thirty-five.
Moderate height.
Broad shoulders.
Almost rectangular face.
Dark, steady eyes, but prominent jaws.
A biggish, well-modeled nose.
Black hair, cropped very close.
A curving mouth with thick, usually tight-set lips.
With his tanned skin, the black down on his hands and arms, the dark but becoming 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.”
Tarrou’s figures were correct.
Dr. Rieux was only too well aware of the serious turn things had taken.
After seeing to the isolation 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 the last 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 isolation 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?”
“No definite grounds.
But the symptoms are definitely alarming.”
Richard, however, repeated that “such measures were outside his province.”
The most he could do was to put the matter up to the Prefect.
But while these talks were going on, the weather changed for the worse.
On the day following old Michel’s death the sky clouded up and there were brief torrential downpours, each of which was followed by some hours of muggy heat.
The aspect of the sea, too, changed; its dark-blue translucency had gone and, under the lowering sky, it had steely or silvery glints that hurt the eyes to look at.
The damp heat of the spring made everyone long for the coming of the dry, clean summer heat.
On the town, humped snail-wise on its plateau and shut off almost everywhere from the sea, a mood of listlessness descended.
Hemmed in by lines and lines of whitewashed walls, walking between rows of dusty shops, or riding in the dingy yellow streetcars, you felt, as it were, trapped by the climate.
This, however, was not the case with Rieux’s old Spanish patient, who welcomed this weather with enthusiasm.