Chapter 26 Chapter 25

Yes, it was time to start again, and the plague would not forget anyone for long.In December, it "burned" in the chests of the citizens again, lit up the crematoriums, and increased the number of people with nothing to do and empty hands in the isolation camp, with a stubborn and The irregular speed kept spreading.The municipality had pinned its hopes on the onset of winter, hoping that the cold would stop the plague's momentum, but the plague kept surmounting the severe cold of early winter without stopping.Have to wait!However, the people waited for a long time and stopped waiting, and the residents of the city lived without hope.

For Dr. Rieux, too, the fleeting moments of peace and friendship he had enjoyed that evening were gone forever.A hospital had been opened in the city, so Rieux had to deal with patients all day long.He found that although the number of patients with pneumonic plague is increasing day by day, the patients seem to cooperate well with the doctors.They were no longer depressed or frenzied, as they had been at the beginning of the plague, but they seemed to have a more correct perception of their own interests, and they asked for what was best for them.They are constantly asking for water, and everyone wants to be treated warmly.Although Rieux was tired as usual, he felt less alone under the circumstances.

Around the end of December, Rieux received a letter from the pre-trial judge M. Othon from the isolation camp, saying that he had been quarantined for more than the stipulated time, but the administration could not find the date of his entry into the isolation camp. So people also mistakenly locked him in there.Madame Othon, who had recently been released from the isolation ward, had protested to the province, where she had run into trouble, and was told that nothing could go wrong.Rieux asked Rambert to come forward and solve the problem.Mr. Othon came to see him a few days later.In fact, something had gone wrong, and Rieux was a little annoyed.But Mr. Othon, who was already thin, raised a weak hand, and said carefully, everyone always makes mistakes.The doctor only felt that the situation had changed a little.

Rieux said: "Monsieur judge, what are you going to do? A lot of files are waiting for you to deal with." "Oh, no," said the judge, "I want to ask for leave." "It's true, you should rest." "That's not what it means. I want to go back to the isolation camp." Rieux said in surprise: "Didn't you just come out of there?" "I didn't make it clear just now. I was told that there are volunteer administrators in this isolation camp." The judge's round eyes rolled around, and he smoothed out a bunch of bristling hair with his hands...

"You see, I might have something to do there. Besides, it's silly to say: it reminds me a lot of my little boy." Rieux looked at him.It was impossible to find tenderness suddenly in Mr. Othon's stern, expressionless eyes.But they have become cloudier and lost their original metallic luster. "Of course," said Rieux, "since you want to go, let me take care of it." The doctor did take care of the matter, and life in the plague city remained the same until Christmas.Tarrou, as always, appeared here and there with an air of composure.Rambert told the doctor that, with the help of two young guardsmen, he had found a secret means of correspondence with his lover.He now receives a letter every once in a while.He suggested that Rieux also use his channels, and the doctor agreed.Rieux was writing a letter for the first time in several months, and it was very difficult for him to pick up the pen.He has forgotten a certain language.The letter was sent, but there was no reply.As for Cottard, he was in the midst of good fortune, his business was flourishing, and his small ventures had made him a fortune.Grand, however, did not enjoy the festive season.

This year's Christmas is not so much a Gospel Festival as a Hell Festival.The shops were empty and gloomy, the windows full of fake chocolates or empty boxes, and the faces of the passengers in the tram were gloomy, and there was no atmosphere of old Christmas.In previous years, families, rich and poor, gathered together at Christmas, but this year only the privileged few hid in the back of the grimy shop, and exchanged a terrible price for some out of the public and unseen. enjoyment.The church was filled not with thanksgiving but with wailing.In this gloomy and cold city, only a few children are running, because they don't understand that the plague is threatening them.But no one dared to mention to them that there used to be Santa Claus, who came with presents and was as old as human suffering but as alive as the hope of the young.Now, in everyone's hearts, there is only a very old and very bleak hope, which keeps people from giving up on themselves and going to death, and persists in living.

On Christmas Eve, Grand did not show up for his appointment.Worried, Rieux went to his house early the next morning, but he was not found.The doctor informed everyone about it.At about eleven o'clock, Rambert came to the hospital and told Rieux that he had seen Grand wandering in the street from a distance, very pale, and then Grand disappeared.So the doctor and Tarrou set off in a car to look for it. At noon, the weather was very cold.Rieux jumped out of the car and watched Grand from a distance.The old servant's face is pressed almost tightly against a display window filled with rough wooden toys.Tears streamed down his face like pearls with a broken string.Seeing this, Rieux was overwhelmed, because he understood what these tears meant, because he himself felt a pang of pain, and his throat was choking.At the same time, Rieux recalled the scene of the betrothal of the unfortunate man: it was also Christmas, and in front of a shop, Jeanne, leaning on Grand's chest, raised her head and told him that she was very happy.Now her clear, love-filled voice returned to Grand's ears from the distant past, that's for sure.Rieux knew what the tearful old man was thinking at this moment, and he was thinking like Grand: this world without love is like a world without life, but there will always be such a moment , people will be tired of prison, work, courage and things like that, and look for the Yiren of the past, the tenderness of the past.

Then Grand saw Rieux through the reflection in the glass.He turned around and leaned against the window to watch the doctor come, tears streaming down his face. "Ah! Doctor, ah! Doctor," he whimpered. Rieux could not utter a word, but nodded his head in sympathy.He was as distressed as Grand.And now he was boiling with rage, for that is what anyone feels when he sees the pain that everyone is suffering. "Oh, Grand," he answered. "I want to find time to write her a letter and let her know...so that she can feel happy without guilt... Rieux pulled Grand forward, somewhat roughly.Grand, on the other hand, let him drag him along almost without resistance, and stammered incoherent words.

"It's been dragging on for too long. I'm going to resign myself to it, what can I do? Ah! Doctor! I look as calm as I do now. But I always have to work hard to manage to be normal." But now, I can't take it anymore!" He stopped, trembling all over, eyes like crazy.Rieux took his hand and found it very hot. "It's time to go back." But Grand broke free from the doctor's hand, ran a few steps, stopped, and opened his arms.Start rocking back and forth.He spun on the spot and collapsed on the cold pavement, his face smudged with tears that continued to flow.Pedestrians saw this scene from a distance and stopped suddenly, not daring to go any further.Rieux had to pick up the old man.

Grand lay in bed, breathing with difficulty, his lungs infected.Rieux thought about it: this old servant has no family, why send him to the isolation ward?Let myself and Tarrou take care of him... Grand's head was buried deep in the pillow, his face was blue, and his eyes were dull.He gazed at the small flame Tarrou had kindled in the fireplace with the fragments of a wooden box."I'm not well," he said, coughing as he spoke, in a strange-sounding, crackling sound that seemed to come from the depths of his burning lungs.Rieux told him to stop talking and said he would recover.The patient first showed a strange smile, and then a gentle expression appeared on his face.Winking with difficulty, he said: "If I escape death, Doctor, I doff my hat to you!" But no sooner had he finished speaking than he fell into a state of exhaustion.

A few hours later, Rieux and Tarrou found Grand sitting on the bed.Rieux was astonished to see the worsening of his condition from his flushed face.But the patient seemed more lucid than before, and immediately upon seeing them, in an unusually low voice, begged them to bring him a manuscript he had kept in a drawer.He took the manuscript that Tarrou had handed him, pressed it to his chest without even looking at it, and then handed it back to Rieux, beckoning the doctor to read it.This is a short manuscript of about fifty pages.The doctor looked through and found that there was only the same sentence written on these manuscript papers, but they were copied and copied, changed and changed, adding, deleting, and deleting.May, female knight, forest path, these words are repeated again and again, arranged and combined in various ways to form sentences.The author also included notes in his manuscript, sometimes extremely lengthy, listing different ways of writing that sentence.But at the end of the last page, there is only one sentence written in very neat calligraphy, and the ink is still fresh: "My dear Jeanne, today is Christmas..." Above this sentence, neatly written With that sentence, this is of course the latest way of writing. "Read it, please," said Grand.And Rieux began to read. "On a beautiful morning in May, a slender female equestrian rode a splendid bay mare through a wooded path among flowers..." "Is that how it's written?" asked the old man in a feverish voice. Rieux did not raise his eyes to look at him. The old man said excitedly: "Ah! I know. Beautiful, beautiful, this word is not exact." Rieux took the sick man's hand which rested on the quilt. "Forget it, doctor. I don't have time..." His chest rose and fell with difficulty, and suddenly he said aloud: "Burn it!" The doctor hesitated, but Grand repeated his order.He spoke in such a harsh and painful tone that at last Rieux had to throw the manuscripts into the dying furnace.The room lighted up quickly, and a brief burn warmed the room slightly.When the doctor returned to the patient's bed, he had turned around and his face was almost pressed against the wall.Tarrou looked out of the window as if indifferent to the spectacle.After Grand had been injected with the serum, Rieux told his friend that the patient would die before the night, and Tarrou offered to stay with him.The doctor agreed. The thought that Grand was going to die kept coming back to Rieux's mind all evening.But the next morning Rieux found Grand sitting on the bed talking to Tarrou.The high fever has subsided, and now only symptoms of general weakness remain. "Ah! Doctor," said the old servant, "I was wrong. But I can rewrite it. You will see, I remember it well." Rieux said to Tarrou: "Wait and see." But at noon, there was still no change.By evening, Grand could already be considered out of danger.Rieux did not understand at all the phenomenon of this resurrection. At about the same time, a young female patient was brought to Rieux.At first, he also thought that she was blinded by the patient, so as soon as the patient arrived at the hospital, he asked someone to isolate her.The unconscious girl babbled nonsense, and her symptoms suggested that she had pneumonic plague.But the next morning, the heat subsided.At that time, the doctor thought that this phenomenon, like Grand's, was a temporary respite in the morning, and based on experience, he regarded it as a sign of bad luck.But at noon, the heat did not pick up.In the evening it rose only a few minutes, and by the third morning the body temperature was normal.Although the girl was very tired, she was breathing freely on the bed.Rieux told Tarrou that the girl's rescue was completely abnormal.But during the week the same thing happened four times in Rieux's hospital. That weekend the old asthmatic received Rieux and Tarrou with great excitement. "It's down," he said, "they're out again." "What got out?" "Hey! Mouse!" Not a single dead mouse has been found since April. Tarrou said to Rieux: "Is it going to start all over again as before?" The old man rubbed his hands happily. "Look at the way they run! It's a joy to see." He had seen two live mice scurrying through his door.Some neighbors have also told him that mice have reappeared in their homes.On some beams the commotion of rats, forgotten for months, was heard again.Rieux waited to know the total statistics published at the beginning of each week.As a result, the figures suggest that the epidemic has weakened.