5
" It was impressive to observe Maigret. In fact, a curious phenomenon was taking place. As he came and went in this house that wasn’t his, as he evoked lives he hadn’t lived, he was no longer entirely the heavy, placid, rough-hewn Maigret. Without his realizing it, there was a little of Forlacroix in the way he moved, the way he spoke. The two men could not have been more dissimilar and yet, at certain moments, it was so striking that the lawyer was quite bothered by it. "
― Georges Simenon , The Judge's House (Maigret, #21)
10
" It was only now, at this precise moment, that Maigret became fully aware of the situation. He literally saw himself, sitting comfortably in his armchair, his legs stretched towards the fire, warming his glass of armagnac in the hollow of his hand. He realized that it wasn’t he who was talking, asking questions, but this short, thin, calm man, the same man who, only a few minutes earlier, had been dragging a dead body to the sea. "
― Georges Simenon , The Judge's House (Maigret, #21)
12
" Maigret was wearing his stubbornest, grouchiest expression, but the truth was that he was basking almost voluptuously in this investigation that had fallen into his lap, right here in Luçon, where he had been exiled. He was like a seal that had been juggling in circuses and now found itself back in the icy seas of the North! How long had it been since he had last entered a house, as he had done earlier, and sniffed about, come and gone, heavily, patiently, until the souls of both people and things no longer held any secrets for him? "
― Georges Simenon , The Judge's House (Maigret, #21)