he "tried to make these poor diseased folk, with their depraved taste and
morbid cravings, swallow his medicine under the disguise of sweetmeats."

That is to say, he himself began to write novels and romances for them;
romances which, indeed, depicted the profligacy of the age, but in such
odious colours as to inspire aversion and contempt. Vice, if described, was
held up to ridicule and loathing. The interest of the story was so well
kept up as to carry the reader on to the end, and that end often showed
the hero or heroine so entirely disabused of the world's enchantment as to
retire voluntarily into convents, in order, by an absolute devotion of the
heart to God, to repair the injury done to Him, by giving to the creature
the love due to Him alone.

These books passed from hand to hand in the gay world, were read, were
enjoyed, and the fruit gathered from them by the reader was the conviction
that God being Himself the Sovereign God, all other love but that of which
He is the object and the end, is as contrary to the happiness of man as it
is opposed to all the rules of justice.

Let us hear what Camus himself says as to his motive and conduct in the
matter of novel writing.[1]

"The enterprise on which I have embarked of wrestling with, or rather
contending against those idle or dangerous books, which cloak themselves
under the title of novels, would surely demand the hands of Briareus to
wield as many pens, and the strength of Hercules to support such a burden!
But what cannot courage, zeal, charity, and confidence in God accomplish?"

He goes on to say that though he sees all the difficulties ahead, his
courage will not fail, for he holds his commission from a Saint, the holy