They were shaking hands at the door of the apartment house where Cottard lived.
“Quite right!” Cottard was growing more and more excited. “That would be a great idea, starting again with a clean sheet.”
Suddenly from the lightless hall two men emerged.
Tarrou had hardly time to hear his companion mutter: “Now, what do those birds want?” when the men in question, who looked like subordinate government employees in their best clothes, cut in with an inquiry if his name was Cottard. With a stifled exclamation Cottard swung round and dashed off into the darkness. Taken by surprise, Tarrou and the two men gazed blankly at each other for some moments.
Then Tarrou asked them what they wanted.
In noncommittal tones they informed him that they wanted “some information,” and walked away, unhurrying, in the direction Cottard had taken.
On his return home Tarrou wrote out an account of this peculiar incident, following it up with a “Feeling very tired tonight”—which is confirmed by his handwriting in this entry.
He added that he had still much to do, but that was no reason for not “holding himself in readiness,” and he questioned if he were ready.
As a sort of postscript—and, in fact, it is here that Tarrou’s diary ends—he noted that there is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a man’s courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only that he feared.
When next day, a few days before the date fixed for the opening of the gates, Dr. Rieux came home at noon, he was wondering if the telegram he was expecting had arrived.
Though his days were no less strenuous than at the height of the epidemic, the prospect of imminent release had obliterated his fatigue.
Hope had returned and with it a new zest for life.
No man can live on the stretch all the time, with his energy and will-power strained to the breaking-point, and it is a joy to be able to relax at last and loosen nerves and muscles that were braced for the struggle.
If the telegram, too, that he awaited brought good news, Rieux would be able to make a fresh start.
Indeed, he had a feeling that everyone in those days was making a fresh start.
He walked past the concierge’s room in the hall.
The new man, old Michel’s successor, his face pressed to the window looking on the hall, gave him a smile.
As he went up the stairs, the man’s face, pale with exhaustion and privation, but smiling, hovered before his eyes.
Yes, he’d make a fresh start, once the period of “abstractions” was over, and with any luck— He was opening the door with these thoughts in his mind when he saw his mother coming down the hall to meet him. M. Tarrou, she told him, wasn’t well.
He had risen at the usual time, but did not feel up to going out and had returned to bed.
Mme. Rieux felt worried about him.
“Quite likely it’s nothing serious,” her son said.
Tarrou was lying on his back, his heavy head deeply indenting the pillow, the coverlet bulging above his massive chest.
His head was aching and his temperature up.
The symptoms weren’t very definite, he told Rieux, but they might well be those of plague.
After examining him Rieux said: “No, there’s nothing definite as yet.”
But Tarrou also suffered from a raging thirst, and in the hallway the doctor told his mother that it might be plague.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Surely that’s not possible, not now!”
And after a moment added:
“Let’s keep him here, Bernard.”
Rieux pondered.
“Strictly speaking, I’ve no right to do that,” he said doubtfully. “Still, the gates will be opened quite soon.
If you weren’t here, I think I’d take it on myself.”
“Bernard, let him stay, and let me stay too.
You know, I’ve just had another inoculation.”
The doctor pointed out that Tarrou, too, had had inoculations, though it was possible, tired as he was, he’d overlooked the last one or omitted to take the necessary precautions.
Rieux was going to the surgery as he spoke, and when he returned to the bedroom Tarrou noticed that he had a box of the big ampoules containing the serum.
“Ah, so it is that,” he said.
“Not necessarily; but we mustn’t run any risks.”
Without replying Tarrou extended his arm and submitted to the prolonged injections he himself had so often administered to others.
“We’ll judge better this evening.” Rieux looked Tarrou in the eyes.
“But what about isolating me, Rieux?”
“It’s by no means certain that you have plague.”
Tarrou smiled with an effort.
“Well, it’s the first time I’ve known you to do the injection without ordering the patient off to the isolation ward.”
Rieux looked away.
“You’ll be better here.
My mother and I will look after you.”
Tarrou said nothing and the doctor, who was putting away the ampoules in the box, waited for him to speak before looking round.
But still Tarrou said nothing, and finally Rieux went up to the bed.