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The basic duplicity of the human being, to use Camus's terminology, lies in our ability to be good citizens, even being capable of supererogatory acts, while all the time indulging in self-pity, self-love, and ultimately self-regarding sentiments.¹ Jean-Baptiste Clamence, the antihero of Camus's The Fall, is the epitome of virtue and hypocrisy. He shamelessly reminds us: "too many people now climb on to the cross merely to be seen from a greater distance" (Camus, 1963, 84). Yet just when the reader feels morally superior to the villain in Camus's masterpiece, it is he, the villain, who has the last laugh. At the end of the story, the portrait he has painted of himself becomes a mirror, he passes from the "I" to the "we": "When I get to "This is what we are", the game is over" (Camus, 1963, 103).

DOI: 10.1057/9780230358447_7

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