He wanted to know if one could imagine that the plague might change nothing in the town and that everything would begin again as before, that is to say, as though nothing had happened. Tarrou thought that the plague would and would not change the town; that, of course, the greatest desire of our fellow-citizens was and would be to behave as though nothing had happened, and that, consequently, in a sense nothing would have changed; but that, in another sense, one cannot forget everything, with the best will in the world, so the plague would leave its mark, at least on people’s hearts.
