8
" Of course, thoughts never passed through Mouchette's head in such a logical way. She was vague and jumped quickly from one thing to another. If the very poor could associate the various images of their poverty they would be overwhelmed by it, but their wretchedness seems to them to consist simply of an endless succession of miseries, a series of unfortunate chances. They are like blind men who with trembling fingers count out the coins whose value they cannot calculate. For the poor, the idea of poverty is enough. Their poverty is faceless.
Now that she had abandoned the struggle Mouchette returned to her instinctive, unconscious, animal-like resignation. As she had never been ill, the cold which chilled her was scarcely a suffering, but rather a discomfort like so many others. It was not threatening, and did not suggest death. In any case, Mouchette thought of death as something as strange and unlikely as winning a big prize in the lottery. At her age, dying and becoming a lady were equally fantastic adventures. "
― Georges Bernanos , Mouchette
11
" For years Mouchette had felt herself a stranger amongst hte villagers, dark and hairy like goats, whom she hated so much. Even while they were still young they ran to unhealthy fat. Their nerves were poisoned by the coffee they drank all day in their stinking cafés, and it finally started to colour their skin.
She was not aware of despising anyone because, in her innocence, this seemed outside of her capabilities and she thought no more of it than she did of the other more material characteristics which the rich and the powerful reserve for themselves. Indeed, she would have been amazed if anyone told her that she despised Madame. She simply saw herself as a rebel against an order which the schoolmistress typified. When Madame told her from time to time that she was no good, she never contradicted her. She was no more ashamed of that than she was of her rags. For a long time she had delighted in a savage indifference to the disdainful comments of the other girls and the mockery of the boys. Often on a Sunday morning, when her mother sent her to the village for the week's bacon, she deliberately let herself get muddy on the road and reached the square just as people were coming out of Mass. And yet, suddenly, something had happened. . . .
He blew on the coal for a few moments longer and then dropped it at his feet. Their eyes met. She would have liked him to understand her feelings, of which she was at the moment only aware of the shock, like the sting of raw spirits on her palate. She could give no name to that shock. What had it in common with what people called love and the actions she had seen? All she could do was to shine the light steadily on his wounded hand. "
― Georges Bernanos , Mouchette
13
" This face, however, had something fraternal and friendly about it. Suddenly it had become as familiar as her own. All the pleasure in looking at it came not from him, but from the depths of herself, where it had lain hidden and germinating, like a seed of wheat beneath the snow. Nothing could alter its power and sweetness, and it depended neither on time nor on place. If it were pushed aside, it would recur again, following a rhythm as natural and regular as that of sleep or hunger. She had, no doubt, occasionally thought of love, but in order to overcome an uncontrollable physical revulsion she had had to force herself to imagine beings as different as possible from those around her, and her imagination was soon defeated. "
― Georges Bernanos , Mouchette
14
" Mouchette's experience told her that Arsène was drunk, even if in a different way from her father. No one had seen him tottering along the road or lurching against a wall, like a wounded animal seeking its lair. He despised such people, calling them yokels, clods who couldn't take their drink, boasting because they had too much. He was proud of the fact that he was not a local man, nor was he from Boulogne, born of a Breton mother and an unknown father. Usually alcohol made him quiet, but sometimes, like tonight, he would talk in an even, quiet voice with a strange light in his eyes, and when he started off on his sea stories (he had once been a sailor) it was better not to laugh. Then he would start to strut — an infallible sign of his anger, which everyone feared because of its strangeness and its difference from their own. "
― Georges Bernanos , Mouchette
