Albert Camus: The Plague

The town itself, let us admit, is ugly. It has a smug, placid air, and you need time to discover what it is, that makes it different from so many business centers in other parts of the world.

How to conjure up a picture, for instance, of a town without pigeons, without any trees or gardens. Where you never hear the beat of wings, or the rustle of leaves, a thoroughly negative place, in short.

The seasons are discriminated only in the sky. All that tells you of spring's coming is the feel of the air or the baskets of flowers brought in from the suburbs by a peddler.