Plague differs from meningitis in being an epidemic: each death is one of many, not an isolated event. Yet though
La Peste
is a novel about an epidemic, seen as a social and not just a natural occurrence, this death is treated as an individualand shockingevent. It is described in more detail than any other death in the book, it is watched by all the main characters, and its emotional impact is devastating, not only on Dr. Rieux, the hero, but also on the priest, Father Paneloux, whom it leads to the edge of heresy.
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That this death is designed to raise a religious issue is clear from the moment we are told that to Rieux and his friend Tarrou the pain inflicted on innocent children never ceased to seem what it was in truth, that is, a scandal (la douleur infligée à ces innocents n'avait jamais cessé de leur paraître ce qu'elle était en verité, c'est-à-dire un scandale). Nature does not perpetrate scandals: the term implies a world that can be judged morally, a world for which someone is responsible.
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In fact it is not God, or Nature, alone that is responsible for the child's suffering. A new vaccine has been devised but not yet tested, and Rieux, deciding that the child is doomed, uses him as the subject for the first trial: it does not save his life, but he does resist longer than one would have expected. When Rieux points this out, Paneloux, who is present, observes that if the child has to die, he will have suffered longer. The remark is a deliberate distraction. Paneloux, who had delivered a fiery sermon when the plague struck, beginning, "My brothers, you are in trouble, and my brothers, you have deserved it" (Mes frères, vous êtes dans le malheur, et mes frères, vous l'avez mérité), suffers as much as anyone watching the child's agony, and his first remark is to single out for condemnation the element in the agony that is due to man. This, however, only postpones his reaction to the real scandal, the suffering inflicted by God. In his second sermon, he deals with this issue: the church this time is less crowded, the delivery less fiery, but for Paneloux it is his supreme confrontation with God. It quite explicitly rejects the stock consolation:
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 | | Il lui aurait été aisé de dire que l'éternité des délices qui attendait l'enfant pouvait compenser sa souffrance, mais en vérité, il n'en savait rien. Qui pouvaitt affirmer en effet que l'éternité d'une joie pouvait composer un instant de la douleur humaine? (iv, 3)
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| | It would have been easy for him to say that the eternity of delight awaiting the child could make up for his suffering, but in truth he knew nothing about that.
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