Yes, I’ve been ashamed ever since; I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace.
And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the mortal enemy of anyone.
I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that’s the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death.
This, and only this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible and even, sometimes, a little good.
So that is why I resolved to have no truck with anything which, directly or indirectly, for good reasons or for bad, brings death to anyone or justifies others’ putting him to death.
“That, too, is why this epidemic has taught me nothing new, except that I must fight it at your side.
I know positively—yes, Rieux, I can say I know the world inside out, as you may see—that each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it.
And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in somebody’s face and fasten the infection on him.
What’s natural is the microbe.
All the rest—health, integrity, purity (if you like)—is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter.
The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.
And it needs tremendous will-power, a never ending tension of the mind, to avoid such lapses.
Yes, Rieux, it’s a wearying business, being plague-stricken.
But it’s still more wearying to refuse to be it.
That’s why everybody in the world today looks so tired; everyone is more or less sick of plague.
But that is also why some of us, those who want to get the plague out of their systems, feel such desperate weariness, a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death.
“Pending that release, I know I have no place in the world of today; once I’d definitely refused to kill, I doomed myself to an exile that can never end.
I leave it to others to make history.
I know, too, that I’m not qualified to pass judgment on those others.
There’s something lacking in my mental make-up, and its lack prevents me from being a rational murderer.
So it’s a deficiency, not a superiority.
But as things are, I’m willing to be as I am; I’ve learned modesty.
All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.
That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can’t judge if it’s simple, but I know it’s true.
You see, I’d heard such quantities of arguments, which very nearly turned my head, and turned other people’s heads enough to make them approve of murder; and I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.
So I resolved always to speak—and to act—quite clearly, as this was the only way of setting myself on the right track.
That’s why I say there are pestilences and there are victims; no more than that.
If, by making that statement, I, too, become a carrier of the plague-germ, at least I don’t do it willfully.
I try, in short, to be an innocent murderer.
You see, I’ve no great ambitions.
“I grant we should add a third category: that of the true healers. But it’s a fact one doesn’t come across many of them, and anyhow it must be a hard vocation.
That’s why I decided to take, in every predicament, the victims’ side, so as to reduce the damage done.
Among them I can at least try to discover how one attains to the third category; in other words, to peace.”
Tarrou was swinging his leg, tapping the terrace lightly with his heel, as he concluded.
After a short silence the doctor raised himself a little in his chair and asked if Tarrou had an idea of the path to follow for attaining peace.
“Yes,” he replied. “The path of sympathy.”
Two ambulances were clanging in the distance.
The dispersed shouts they had been hearing off and on drew together on the outskirts of the town, near the stony hill, and presently there was a sound like a gunshot.
Then silence fell again.
Rieux counted two flashes of the revolving light.
The breeze freshened and a gust coming from the sea filled the air for a moment with the smell of brine.
And at the same time they clearly heard the low sound of waves lapping the foot of the cliffs.
“It comes to this,” Tarrou said almost casually; “what interests me is learning how to become a saint.”
“But you don’t believe in God.”
“Exactly!
Can one be a saint without God?—that’s the problem, in fact the only problem, I’m up against today.”
A sudden blaze sprang up above the place the shouts had come from and, stemming the wind-stream, a rumor of many voices came to their ears.
The blaze died down almost at once, leaving behind it ony a dull red glow.
Then in a break of the wind they distinctly heard some strident yells and the discharge of a gun, followed by the roar of an angry crowd.
Tarrou stood up and listened, but nothing more could be heard.