Detective and priest: the paradoxes of Simenon's Maigret.

Ely, Peter B.

What distinguishes the Maigret stories of Georges Simenon (19031989) (1) from the detective fiction of authors like Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle is their attention to the humanity of both the investigator and the investigated. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Christie's Poirot are essentially problem solvers, "pure logicians of time and space," as Michel Sirvent calls them (Merivale and Sweeny 165). "[hough Maigret can be as meticulous and persistent in his search for clues as any other detective, he ultimately resolves crimes by entering the humanity of the criminals he pursues, more interested in solving the mystery of broken lives than in finding the perpetrators of crimes. "There are no great feats of ratiocination" in the Maigret stories, "and the problems they present are human as much as they are criminal" (Symons 150). Commentators have recognized this deeply human character of Simenon's Maigret, but they have not noticed a fundamental paradox: though Maigret is, like his creator, a thoroughly secular man in his personal beliefs, he manifests a profoundly Christian, even priestly character in his approach to solving crimes. I will examine several stories that explicitly manifest the priestly vocation of Maigret and certain traits that seem best described as Christian.

Maigret's Vocation

While never using the term vocation, Simenon takes time in several of his Maigret stories to let the reader in on the deeper desire that undergirds Maigret's career as detective (policier). At the root of the police career lies a priestly ambition. Chapter V of La Premiere Enquete de Maigret (Maigret's First Case)--not the first of Simenon's Maigret works in spite of its title--bears the title, "La Premiere Ambition De Maigret," the first ambition of Maigret. It seems that Maigret chose to enter the police because it was closest to the profession (metier) he had always desired, a profession that really didn't exist. "Even as a young man, in his village, he had always had the impression that a great many people (des tas de gens) were not in their rightful place, that they were following a path which was not their own, simply because they didn't know better" (La Premiere Enquete 90). And he imagined a man "very intelligent and full of understanding (tres intelligent et tres comprehensif) ... both doctor and priest" someone "who would understand at his first glance the destiny of the other person" (90). People would come to consult such a person as they consult a doctor. He would be in some way a "mender of destinies" (un raccommodeur de destins). This person would be a mender of destinies not primarily because of his intelligence--in fact he might not have to be of exceptional intelligence--"mais parce qu'il etait capable de vivre la vie de tousles hommes, de se mettre dans la peau de tous les hommes" ("but because he was capable of living the life of all men, of putting himself in the skin of all men") (90). Above all, Maigret puts himself in the skin of those who suffer, who are driven to crime by desperation, or who have lived their whole lives as victims. He has no particular sympathy with the rich or powerful. In his identification with the poor rather than the rich, Maigret shows himself closer to the priestly role of Christ than to the clerics who would have dominated the Church of Simenon's years in Liege. If Maigret is priestly, it is according to the model of the compassionate founder of Christianity.

The idea of trying to enter the lives of others, to become part of their world, recurs regularly. In Maigret et le Client du Samedi (Maigret and Saturday's Customer), Maigret receives a strange visitor, Planchon, who is afraid with good reason that Maigret might take him for a fool. But Maigret was not satisfied with the idea that the man was a fool: "Il cherchait a comprendre davantage ; a s'enfoncer dans l'univers ahurissant de Planchon" ("He was trying to understand better, to enter deeply into Planchon's astounding world") (36). In Maigret et l'Homme du Banc (1952), the identification with the victim takes place in two ways. One way is that elements of a victim's or suspect's experience find a resonance in Maigret's own experience. A man assassinated in an alleyway is, mysteriously, wearing shoes the color of caca d'oie, greenish-yellow--literally the color of goose-dung. He had never worn such shoes at home or work where he was a model of respectability. Maigret, after getting to know more about the man, concludes that the shoes are an expression of independence from his domineering wife during the times the man is away from his family and engaged in criminal activities that provide income after he has lost his job. Maigret, we find out--and this is the key point--"had himself, for years, dreamed of wearing greenish-yellow shoes. It was the mode at that time. ..." (62). He had even bought such a pair of shoes but never wore them after Madame Maigret's mocking question: "You're not going to wear those are you?" (62). A second kind of identification in which Maigret takes on the characteristics of the victim occurs later in the novel. His wife notices that Maigret does not seem to be himself: "You seem like someone else ... you are not Maigret" (109). Maigret laughs and realizes that "he has been thinking so much about Louis Thoret (the victim) that he has ended up conducting himself as he imagined Louis would have acted, by taking on the expressions of his face" (109).

The fullest description I have found of this process of entering into the lives of other people, even letting them take up residence in him, becoming them in a sense, occurs in Maigret a New York (1946). This passage will also be important when we look at the third phase of Maigret's famous "method." Though Maigret is in America, having accompanied a young French man who is worried about his father now living in New York, the author / narrator refers us back to Paris and the Quai des Orfevres where Maigret's coworkers would say of him at a certain point in an investigation, "Ca y est. Le patron est en transes" ("There it is, the boss is in a trance") (14648). Le Petit Robert gives two meanings for the word transe. The first is to be in a state of worried agitation as in etre dans les transes. The second meaning is closer to the English word "trance," a state of altered consciousness. En transes, as opposed to dans les transes, designates a kind of exaltation or transport as would be experienced by a depersonalized medium possessed by an alien spirit.

Clearly Maigret's associates were thinking of the second meaning. It may have been said in jest, but it still revealed the truth (New York 147). In a way, Maigret becomes a different person, heavier, having a different way of clenching his pipe between his teeth and of smoking it "in little short puffs widely-spaced" (147). This was "parce qu'il etait entierement pris par son activite interieur (because he was wholly taken up by his interior activity") (147). In this altered state, as the characters in the drama "had ceased to be pawns or puppets to become human beings, Maigret put himself in their skin. He worked at (s'acharnait) putting himself into their skin" (147). Simenon elaborates further: What someone like him (ce qu'un de ses semblables) had thought, had lived, had suffered--couldn't he think it, relive it, suffer it in turn? Such an individual, at a moment in his life, under definite circumstances, had reacted and (for Maigret) it was a matter of making identical reactions come from the depths of himself (du fond de soi-meme) by virtue of putting himself in the other's place. (148) (2)

It would be hard to find a fuller description of the incarnational character of Maigret's method. We will return to it.

Maigret has, then, conceived his police work in terms of a vocation that enables him to be a mender of destinies by entering into the experience of other people. Unable to complete his medical studies (also mentioned in Pietr le Letton 127), Maigret had entered the police (Premiere Enquete 90-91). As it turns out, Maigret continues to reflect, his entrance into the police may not have been accidental. "Are not detectives (policiers) in fact sometimes menders of destinies" (91)? All the previous night, Maigret had continued to live with members of the family where the crime has occurred, people he scarcely knew, yet they filled his thoughts. In Les Memoires de Maigret (Maigret's Memoirs), in the midst of complaints that his own reality has been distorted by this young novelist who insists on oversimplifying, caricaturing, and distorting his character, Maigret remarks: "Simenon has spoken of 'a mender of destinies,' and he didn't invent the word, which is truly from me and which I must have let drop one day when we were conversing" (69).

So Maigret, at least at the beginning of his career, seems to think of himself as doctor, detective, and priest (medecin, pretre et policier) (Premiere Enquete 90-91). I am particularly interested in the emphasis on Maigret's priestly character. It's not just that both detectives and priests can be menders of destinies. A significant number of Maigret novels attest to something priestly about Maigret's way of being a detective. This is not surprising given the presumption early in his life on the part of parents and teachers that Simenon would become a priest. Even though, as we have seen above, Simenon renounced priesthood after his first sexual encounter, he was even after that deeply influenced by a young professor of literature at the College St-Servais "who was himself preparing for the priesthood" (Assouline 13). Assouline cites a reference to this professor from a letter Simenon wrote to Jean Mambrino in 1951: "He is probably the man who had the greatest influence on me" (13). Patrick Marnham describes Simenon, age 11, at the beginning of the First World War: "At the outbreak of hostilities he was a devout child who sometimes experienced mystical interludes; he was an altar boy, a conformist and vowed to the priesthood" (38). By the end of the war, says Marnham, "Georges was still only 15, but had lost his faith, abandoned all thoughts of priesthood, left school, started work, lost his first two jobs, and was certain that although he was not yet an adult he was a failure" (38). Out of this dark beginning developed the Simenon who created the extraordinarily sympathetic and priestly character of Maigret.

This priestly connection, which occurs over and over, has to do with the role of confessor and sympathetic listener. The same Planchon I referred to above, tempted to kill his wife who has taken a lover, comes to Maigret as one would to a priest for confession. "If I still went to church as I did when my mother was still alive, I would no doubt have gone to confession (Si je frequentais encore l'eglise, comme du vivant de ma mere, je semis sans doute alle me confesser") (Simenon, Maigret et le Client du Samedi 38). Instead of going to confession to a priest, Planchon comes to Maigret not remembering how he thought of the detective and not even imagining in the beginning that he would have the courage to come find Maigret. "But now that I am here," he says, "I would like to tell everything all at once" ("Je voudrais tout dire a la fois") (38). Later, Maigret asks Planchon what, had he gone to confession, he thinks the priest would have said. "I suppose he would have tried to turn me from my project ... (of killing my wife)" (50). And you would too, Planchon adds.

The conversation continues, and it becomes more and more evident that Planchon has come to Maigret not as a detective but as a kind of priest substitute. When Maigret suggests that Planchon might be looking for someone to prevent him from committing the crime, Planchon becomes discouraged, recognizing that such prevention is not possible and fearing now that Maigret has missed the point of the visit. Finally Maigret draws the inevitable conclusion: "What you have come looking for here is a sort of absolution" ("ce que vous etes venu chercher ici, c'est une sorte d'absolution") (Samedi 51). "You need to know that you will be understood, that you are not a monster and that your project is the only solution left you ..." (51). In another novel, Maigret et le Tueur (Maigret and the Killer), Maigret says of his country house at Meung-sur-Loire that it always seemed to him to resemble a priest's house (une maison de cure). Maigret is staying there with his wife and tells her he has received a call from the killer of a young man. "To mock you?" she asks, "As a kind of challenge?" (le Tueur 152). "No," answers Maigret, "he needed comfort ("il avait besoin de reconfort".)" "And he came to you?" asks Madame Maigret." "He had no one else available" Maigret responds (152).

Secular and Christian

The fact that Simenon would inject a priestly quality into Maigret's original conception of his calling (metier) and to his way of practicing his profession is ironic. Though both Simenon and his police detective Maigret came from Catholic origins, neither of them remained committed to their original faith. In L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre (The Saint Fiacre Affair), Maigret investigates a crime in the town of St Fiacre near Moulins in central France where he grew up and used to serve Mass in the parish church. Simenon tells us that Maigret always preferred serving the funeral Masses because the prayers were shorter. But the mature Maigret never gives any sign of a religious commitment or practice. Simenon himself, raised in Liege Belgium, attended the Jesuit College St. Louis and was deeply religious until he learned at age fifteen that his much-loved father, whom he considered a saint, was going to die within a few years. "At that moment, he ceased to be a Believer and the teachings of the Church became a mockery" (Bresler 28). Another biographer, Pierre Assouline, uses the title "Altar Boy" for his first chapter that describes Simenon's life up to age sixteen and tells us that "his family and his teachers had him earmarked for the priesthood" (12). After his first sexual encounter at age twelve, an event that launched him on a prodigiously active sexual career, "he solemnly informed his teachers and parents that he had decided to renounce the priesthood in favor of--a military career" (12). Still, even after Simenon loses his faith in this "first chapter" of his life, key elements of Christianity appear, probably without any explicit intention, in Simenon's Maigret, especially in his attitude toward his profession and his pursuit of it, both of which show extraordinary human virtues.

In Christian tradition, of course, the primordial paradox is the Incarnation itself, and Christ is the High Priest. Maigret's way of operating too is fundamentally incarnational and in that sense priestly. He solves crimes, as we have seen, by identifying with the objects of his investigation, by "living their lives" and "entering into their skin" (Simenon, Premiere enquete 90). Maigret enters into the criminal world, knows its vocabulary, identifies with both its victims and its perpetrators. In Les Memoires de Maigret (Maigret's Memoires), the "real" Maigret--as opposed to Simenon's fictional character--speaks of the familial relation the police inspectors had with those they were charged to investigate. Simenon has tried to portray it, says Maigret, without quite succeeding. The prostitute of the Rue de Clichy and the inspector watching over her both have bad shoes and sore feet from walking miles of pavement. They have endured the same rain and the same freezing wind. Evening and night have for them the same color and both see, almost with the same eye, the underside of the crowd that flows around them. (111)

Maigret identifies with those who suffer. In this he imitates Christ's compassion, his willingness to take on human suffering, even sin, as well as his incarnation.

Not only does Maigret identify with the people whom society looks on condescendingly as sinners, he recognizes throughout society the universal tendency toward weakness and immoral behavior that Christians call original sin. Respectable (bien-portants) people love to look down on criminals, to treat with contempt the immigrants gathered by the thousands in slums, hoping that the police will discover "their dirty secrets, the vices peculiar (inedits) to them, and all kinds of sordid behavior (pouillerie) that will both justify indignation and provide a source of secret delight" (Memoires 131). But these respected citizens are not as worthy of respect as they would like us to believe. They too cheat and practice little obscenities (saletes) that they carefully camouflage. These are the same people who ask Maigret, "with a slight trembling of their lips, if he isn't ever disgusted" by the behavior of the people he deals with (131). Maigret contrasts this condescending hypocrisy with the "humility that one scarcely ever finds except among those who have been uprooted from their origins" (les deracines) (131).

One is reminded of the prayers of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee prays: "I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get." The tax collector "stood some distance away, not even daring to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said 'God, be merciful to me a sinner'." And Jesus responded that the tax-collector went home "at rights with God" while the Pharisee did not: "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 18:9-14). Simenon must have known this text. Whether it influenced his conception of Maigret, we do not know. More clear from his biographers is that Maigret, though he is neither Simenon himself nor Simenon's father, Desire, "has flaws and virtues borrowed from both" (Assouline 92). Another biographer, Fenton Bresler, citing a 1955 radio interview with Simenon, sharpens the connection between Maigret and Simenon's father, Desire. "When I wanted to create a sympathetic person who understood everything, that is to say Maigret, I gave him without realizing it, certain of my father's characteristics" (68). Bresler adds his own reflection: "Maigret, like Desire Simenon, loves his fellow men, understands and pities them. He believes they have killed or committed crimes because they are weak or unhappy, because they feel threatened, because they are frightened" (68).

These words of Bresler evoke a strikingly similar sentiment expressed by Augustine of Hippo (354-430) whose name we most closely associate with the doctrine of original sin that I am suggesting Maigret intuitively grasps. "Many sins are committed through pride, but not all happen proudly ... they happen so often by ignorance, by human weakness; many are committed by men weeping and groaning in their distress" (On Nature and Grace Vol. 23, 241). Maigret's ability to enter into the lives of his characters, victims and suspects, correlates with his sense of universal human weakness and the compassion that follows from that sense. Maigret himself, as we will see, recognizes his own participation in the human weakness that gives rise to the crimes he investigates. What keeps people reading Maigret novels is not the intellectual satisfaction of solving a puzzle but the privilege of seeing the exquisitely tender rapport between the investigator and the investigated, the pursuer and the pursued, the hunter and the hunted. Sometimes we will even see the striking irony of the criminal object of Maigret's investigation pursuing Maigret, desiring to be caught because to be caught is to be known.

The Paradoxes of Maigret

Within the overarching paradoxes of the Incarnation, the religious manifested in the secular, and the vocation that combines detective and priest, other paradoxical relationships emerge. First is Maigret's famous "method" It comes up in almost every novel. The paradox lies in the fact that although Maigret is famous for his method, he claims not to have a method. The second paradox is that though Maigret's function as a detective is by definition to identify and hunt down criminals--he is the hunter--it often happens that while he looks for the culprit, the culprit is looking for him. A further irony in this dialectic of the hunter and the hunted arises from the fact that Maigret himself, because of his unorthodox methods, sometimes makes himself the object of his superiors' wrath, becoming a suspect in their eyes. Finally, the deepest paradox lies in the mysterious combination of policier, medecin, et pretre, detective, doctor, and priest (Premiere Enquete 90) to which I have already referred. I will examine each of these paradoxes.

Maigret's Paradoxical Method

When Simenon refers to Maigret's "method;' it is usually to deny that his chief inspector has a method. In an early work, Le Chien Jaune (The Yellow Dog), one of Maigret's inspectors admits that he does not yet understand his boss's methods but thinks he is beginning to guess. Maigret looks at the inspector with laughing eyes and responds that in this case: "My method has been precisely not to have one" (142). An inspector from the city of Groningen where Maigret is investigating a crime asks Maigret what he thinks. "That is the question!" answers Maigret. "And there is the difference between the two of us. You think something, you think all kinds of things! While I myself--I believe I don't think anything anymore" (Un Crime en Hollande [A Crime in Holland] 85). In a 1950 novel, Maigret et La Vieille Dame (Maigret and the Old Woman), inspector Castaing, surprised to see the commissaire "sleepy and indecisive," asks Maigret in the middle of their investigation, "What should I do next?" Maigret tells him to do whatever he wants, poke around wherever. Find out what you can. Maybe something will come up (123). Maigret knows that in every investigation this moment comes when he and his colleagues have done all their homework, getting to know the players, asking questions, believing or not believing the responses but being slow to form an opinion. At this stage the characters have pretty clear and simple profiles but remain distant. And then things begin to "come alive" (grouiller). The characters become more hazy (flous) and at the same time more human, and above all more complicated (La Vielle Dame 123-24).

Passages like these suggest that Maigret, while protesting that he has no method, does in fact have a method, not a logically rigorous one, but a distinct way of proceeding of which he is very conscious and very much in charge. The method has three stages. The first consists in the normal investigative procedures that any detective would undertake: identification of fingerprints, careful examination of the victim's body, looking for traces of blood on clothing, asking questions. Maigret is meticulous about this stage. In one novel, Maigret et Son Mort (Maigret's Dead Man), the victim was wearing a beige raincoat when he was found but Maigret suspects he was not wearing the coat when he was killed. So Maigret puts the man's clothes, including the raincoat, on a mannequin he has in his headquarters, the famous PJ or Police Judiciare, to see if the tears made by the knife in the raincoat and those in the suit match. They don't, so Maigret's suspicion, that the victim was not wearing this coat at the time of his death but that the assassins wanted the police believe he was, is confirmed (33-34).

But all this careful, highly professional investigation carried on by a team of collaborators that often crosses national boundaries and involves multiple police jurisdictions, yields only uncertainty and confusion. Thus begins the second stage, the stage of doubt on Maigret's part, sometimes profound discouragement and sluggishness, in which Maigret appears like a lost soul. In England--his visits there always seem to unhinge him--Maigret waits in a bar for a young man he hopes to save from committing a foolish crime. "He felt that everyone was looking at him, that the old gentleman next to him studied him with a critical eye" (Le Revolver de Maigret 138). "His self confidence was slipping away" (139). In the gruesome story of the body without a head (Maigret et le Corps Sans Tete), Maigret went back to his office and "began to take on the grumpy (grognon), sullen (maussade) air that almost always came to him at a certain stage of an investigation" (79), the "certain stage" being what I am calling the second phase of his method. Whereas "just yesterday he was making discoveries, accumulating them without asking where they might lead, he now found himself facing bits of truth that he didn't know how to tie together" (79).

In this second stage, Maigret begins a transition from thinking about the characters inhabiting the world of his investigation to letting them enter his world. Maigret S'Amuse (Maigret's Little Joke) describes a Maigret who really doesn't know what he is thinking about because his state of consciousness has more to do with feeling than with thinking (raisonnement 149). He felt (sentait) the truth close at hand but was powerless to take hold of it (la saisir). And as Maigret moved from thinking to feeling, the objects of his investigation took on a different character too: "It was as if the three characters of the drama had taken up life in him" (149) and had become no longer abstract entities but real human beings, but unfortunately "incomplete and schematic human beings" (149). At this stage as described in Maigret a New York (Maigret in New York) the commissaire "floundered (pataugait), did what he had to do, nothing more, gave orders, gathered information on this one and that one, with the air of being interested only moderately in the investigation, sometimes not interested at all" (147). Then, when one least expects it, when Maigret seems discouraged by the complexity of the task, something clicks (le declic se produisait), and Maigret moves into the state of trance we saw above that allows him to enter into the lives of the characters. This declic points the way to the third stage of the investigation, a stage dominated by feeling and intuition rather than logical reasoning. "Here as in most cases;' the narrator reflects in Maigret s'Amuse, "there is not only one solution possible, but at least two. But only one is the right one, only one is the human truth (la verite humaine)." One does not arrive at the human truth by "rigorous reasoning or a logical reconstitution of the facts, but by feeling it (la sentir)" (149). The French dictionary Le Petit Robert gives as the first meaning of sentir "to have the sensation or the perception of (an object, a fact, a quality)" The fifth meaning is "to guess at (deviner), to discern (discerner)." The second phase of Maigret's method, then, involves a breakdown of thinking, accompanied by confusion, ill-humor, and a lack of self-confidence, a breakdown that opens up the way to feeling or discernment as a way of knowing the truth. Maigret will wait for the revelatory moment that he has been anticipating in the midst of his feelings of discouragement

So we come to the third phase of Maigret's "method," the phase that distinguishes him as a detective from Michel Sirvent's "pure logicians of time and space" mentioned in the first paragraph of this article. The key to grasping this phase is the transition from thinking to feeling that I have described immediately above. This phase resembles a certain kind of discernment described by spiritual writers. The notion of a trance, used jokingly but with real meaning, by Maigret's colleagues in Maigret a New York, suggests a kind of spiritual--not religious--awareness that disposes the detective to enter into the other person's life and thus resolve the issues involved in the investigation. For Maigret this mode of knowing has a double purpose. First it enables him to unravel the mystery surrounding the events in a particular story. In the second place, this discerning attitude allows Maigret to carry out his vocation of mender of destinies for those who have somehow lost their way.

Again, Maigret a New York offers a striking example. All that I am describing here takes place in that trance-like state that Maigret's colleagues jokingly but with a significant measure of truth would often refer to. This mode of knowing that I am comparing to discernment opens Maigret up to the existential, human, spiritual truth that lies behind the facts of the case. Little John is a wealthy man who came to America years ago and, after beginning life as an entertainer, has moved into the business of making juke-boxes for restaurants. Little John's son, Jean, has asked Maigret to come with him to New York to see if they can solve the riddle of Little John's changed behavior, formerly tender but now detached, toward his son. After being in New York for a while, where he feels intensely uncomfortable, and meeting Little John several times, Maigret makes a startling discovery: "I have discovered that Little John has cold eyes (les yeux froids)" (41). Taking this material clue as a starting point, Maigret begins to question what makes John Maura's eyes cold. Later in the story, he can say: "There is something in those cold eyes that resembles anger (exasperation), but resembles something else too" (55). To find out what that something else was, Maigret had to become Little John (150). He would not discover the truth by running after it (courir apres) as his American colleague wanted to do, but by "letting himself be impregnated (se laisser impregner) by the pure and simple truth" (151). Slowly, step-by-step, through a sympathetic re-creation of Little John's life, Maigret arrives at the truth about the cold eyes. It seems that Little John had, in a moment of blind jealousy, murdered his lover, the mother of his son whom he thinks his friend may have fathered. And now, knowing that his lover's son was also his, Little John lives with regret at killing the only woman he has ever loved. And now Maigret knows, as he tells Little John, "the sorrow that gave these eyes their terrible coldness" (183). Little John has paid the price of his crime, not through the system of criminal justice but through a worse punishment, his own suffering. He had sincerely wished, for one reason only, he tells Maigret, that the whole affair would crack open, so that he could rest (a me reposer) (187). Though Simenon does not use here the language of priesthood or mender of destinies, it is clear that his discovery of the mystery behind the cold eyes has given Little John what he has long sought--rest.

Simenon's religious origins may well have opened his eyes to this kind of discernment. His time at a Jesuit high school in Liege would most likely have engaged him in some version of Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, where he might well have been introduced to Ignatian discernment. Moreover, some significant residue of the "religious mysticism" that Bresler and Marnham note as a manifestation of the young Simenon's "intense inner life" (Bresler 21; Marnham 38) probably remained in the mature Simenon who invested Maigret with his acute intuitive sense. In any case, the practice of Ignatian discernment does shed light on this third phase of Maigret's method and at least provides an analogy to help us understand how Maigret proceeds. Loyola, one of the masters of spiritual discernment, sets out a method for making decisions in harmony with God's will. Maigret, of course, is trying to solve crimes, to determine which is the true solution, not to make decisions according to God's will. But the method is similar. If we look at Ignatius' "Three Times When a Correct and Good Choice of a Way of Life May Be Made" (74), we find in one of these ways a method of discernment that clarifies what I have called the third stage of Maigret's method. Ignatius' first time of making a choice is when a person is overwhelmed by a personal manifestation of God such that "a devout soul without hesitation, or the possibility of hesitation, follows what has been manifested to it" (74). This kind of immediate certainty, if it occurred, would put an end to any mystery story since all of them depend on lingering uncertainty as an essential ingredient. The third time of making a decision is a "time of tranquility" in which a person can think rationally about his life and come to a sensible decision in conformity with God's will. This parallels the first stage of Maigret's method, the rational investigation of clues, motives, and circumstances.

Ignatius' "second time" offers the comparison we are looking for. It is a time "when much light and understanding are derived through experience of desolations and consolations and discernment of different spirits" (74). The moodiness of the second stage of Maigret's method fits this alternation of "desolations and consolations" The closer Maigret comes to the truth the more consolation, calmness, and self-assurance replaces ill-humor and doubt. In Maigret a New York, the narrator speaks of "une force tranquille" (165, 170) that overtakes Maigret as the truth becomes clearer. At times, one can find God's will through reasoning but at other times, when thinking breaks apart leaving only confusion, doubt, and uncertainty, one is reduced to sorting through the questions that arise from one's feelings and examining one's experience until some sort of insight emerges as a kind of revelation. In this sense, the third phase of Maigret's method can be understood as a kind of discernment. The Commissaire is no longer looking for physical clues that will lead to logical consequences but to human clues. He looks for "une fissure"--a cast of characters still missing a crucial person (Le Charretier de la Providence [The Crime of Lock] 14, 121); the moment for which he searches, waits, and watches when behind the criminal as playing a role appears the man (Pietr le Letton, [Peter the Lett], 57-58). Simeon also speaks of "la felure," a kind of moral flaw that reveals the true character of the culprit (La Tete d'un Homme [A Man's Head] 169). Sometimes "la felure" consists in a kind of perceptible gap between the words the suspect is saying and reality (Maigret Hesite [Maigret Hesitates] 169). In Maigret a New York the cold eyes of Little John served as the discovery that raised Maigret's curiosity. In Maigret et l'homme du banc (The Man of the Park Bench), Maigret wonders why he has the impression that the woman talking to him is hiding something (44).

In wondering why he has the impression that the woman is hiding something, Maigret uses reflection on his own experience as a way of coming to the truth outside him. Again, Ignatius of Loyola traces the origins of his own teaching about discernment to a similar reflection. In his autobiography, Ignatius describes reactions to two different kinds of reading material. When his memory took him back to romantic tales of chivalry that he had always loved to read, he experienced an initial exhilaration that after a time ended in revulsion. But when he read about the lives of Christ and the saints, he experienced a delight that did not diminish. For a long time, Ignatius tells us, he paid no attention to these diverse reactions "until one day his eyes were opened a little and he began to wonder at the difference and to reflect on it, learning from experience that one kind of thoughts left him sad and the other cheerful" (10). He concluded that one sort of thoughts came from the evil spirit, the other from the good spirit. Like Ignatius, Maigret is a man who trusts in the power of his own inner experience to reveal the truth. The similarity is in the method, not in the kind of truth revealed.

Simenon's comment in Maigret s'Amuse on the concluding phase of an investigation illustrates this feature of Maigret's method. The passage in question shows both an objective component, a change of behavior in the suspect, and a subjective change in the investigator himself. "Almost always" comments the invisible narrator, "after a time more or less long, comes a time when the resistance suddenly cracks and the detective (policier) has nothing before him but a man in desperation (aux abois). For, at this moment, he becomes once again a man, a man who has stolen or killed but, all the same, a man ..." (176). And this transformation of the suspect corresponds to a change in the investigator. I have already referred above to an earlier phase of this investigation when Maigret "sensed (sentait) the truth close at hand (toute proche) and was powerless (impuissant) to grasp it" (149). Now, in a moment of revelation, the power to grasp the truth is given. He has found the truth that eluded him. "He has accomplished his work as a detective (fair son metier de policier)" (176). His earlier frustration has given way to a sense that he has done what he can, uncovered the culprit, and can now leave to others to judge. Maigret repeats often that he aims to understand not to judge. He would not want to be a magistrate or a juror in a trial (jure dans un proces d'assises) because he would have to judge. "No, I am certain I would never undertake to judge a human being" (Maigret se Defend 12). Again, "It is not my role to judge" (Maigret et le Tueur 167). This resting in the accomplishment of his proper role parallels Ignatius' sense of peace in recognizing that God is leading him to imitate the saints rather than to aim for deeds of chivalry. The contemplation of chivalrous ambitions led Ignatius to desolation, much as technical but less than human clues led Maigret to ill humor and frustration. And to Maigret's sense of completion on seeing the suspect revealed before him as a fully human, though imperfect, being corresponds Ignatius' peace derived from contemplating the path God revealed to him, that of following the saints.

The three phases of Maigret's "method" are related dialectically. The first phase lays the physical, factual, rational basis of the investigation. The second phase represents a kind of negation of the first phase, a coming-to-nothing of all the careful examining, a kind of death. The third phase brings to life the facts that seemed to have failed to yield anything, not by more reasoning or more collecting of data, but by a revelation that emerges for the investigator who is willing to wait. This third phase, since it relies on Maigret's ability to enter into the lives of others and thus become a racornmadeur de destins, is precisely the place where the priestly character that the narrator identified with Maigret's original vocation most fully finds expression.

The Paradox of the Hunter and the Hunted

This paradox lies in the third phase of Maigret's method where ordinary investigative procedures no longer contribute toward the resolution of an investigation. A clear example of this phenomenon occurs in Simenon's Maigret et le Marchand de Vins (Maigret and the Wine Merchant). Gilbert Pigou, accountant for a wealthy wine merchant, Oscar Chabut, has shot and killed his boss who had mercilessly humiliated him in the presence of another employee and even slapped him across the face after discovering that the accountant was stealing small sums of money. The accountant stole because his wife spent more than he earned and was constantly after him to bring home more money. Pigou is precisely one of those persons mentioned above (2) of whom Maigret had always had the impression "that they were not in their rightful place, that they were following a path that was not their own ..." (Premiere Enquete 90). Maigret, after a conversation with the wine merchant's secretary, now regards the accountant as a suspect. This all occurs through normal investigative processes.

But now, in the final phase of the investigation, something curious begins to emerge; the suspect is as much interested in Maigret's investigation as Maigret is in him. He knows more about Maigret's moves than Maigret does about his. "Ever since I began the investigation regarding the death of Oscar Chabut as he was leaving the brothel of Fortuny Street, a man seems to be interested in my every activity. He is intelligent because he seems to anticipate every movement I make" (Premiere Enquete 144). The mysterious observer, it seems, is clever at slipping into a crowd once he knows he has been sighted, and Maigret has not yet been able to meet up with him. Maigret is pretty sure, though he has no proof, that this is the culprit. Maigret is both pursuer and pursued.

The man calls Maigret on the telephone but always hangs up when Maigret suggests they should meet. "It was almost a game," comments the author / narrator, "that so far Pigou is winning" (Premiere Enquete 149). Maigret's wife notices in him the discouragement that marks the second phase of his method (151). Maigret's mood continues to deteriorate (154). He understands what is happening without being able to do anything about it; the initiative is in the hands of the suspect, a man who has been humiliated all his life and now has become someone important, keeping at bay the whole police force of Paris. "This" says Maigret, "is why he hesitates between letting himself be caught and continuing to play at cat and mouse" (155). The way the suspect approaches only to draw back reminds Maigret of a squirrel he had played with years before who would get tantalizingly close only to scamper away just as it seemed they might make contact.

Finally, outside Maigret's apartment on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, the drama reaches its climatic moment. Gilbert Pigou appears across from the apartment, watching timidly like the squirrel. Asked by Madame Maigret if he thinks the man wants to come see him, Maigret responds: "He is tempted. I think he is afraid to be disappointed. A man like him is very vulnerable. He would like for someone to understand him and at the same time he tells himself it is impossible" (Premiere Enquete 157). Finally, at two-thirty a.m., Pigou knocks at Maigret's door and Madame Maigret lets him in. Hesitant at first, like the squirrel ready to retreat at the first sign of danger, Pigout finally enters. Madame Maigret prepares two grogs. The two men begin to speak. Their dialogue is extraordinary for its human intimacy. "I expected you would come eventually," says Maigret. "Did you see me? asks Pigou, making a tentative beginning of conversation. Given what we know about Pigou's character and his interest in seeking out Maigret, we can legitimately conclude that his question applies to more than physical seeing. Maigret's answer, which implies a "yes" to Pigout's question, affirms that Maigret did indeed see something beyond the physical form of the man watching his apartment. "I even sensed that you were hesitating. You advanced a step then left for the Rue du Chemin Vert" (164). Still more revealing is the response of Pigou: "As for me, I saw your silhouette at the window. Since I wasn't in the light I didn't know if you were able see me and above all to recognize me" (164). To be seen, to be recognized--Pigou had not experienced this in his entire unfortunate, misdirected life and now before this police officer who has been tracking him down, he begins to hope. He isn't drawn to the police officer as such but to the "mender of destinies," the priest to whom one can confess everything without being judged.

The two men are ill at ease at first, avoiding the inevitable conversation about practical details like prison and trial. They observe each other. Maigret doesn't miss so much as a change of expression on his visitor's face. "In the intimacy of the apartment, a grog within reach of his hand, his pipe in his mouth, (Maigret) had the air of a benevolent older brother to whom one could tell everything" (Premiere Enquete 165). Maigret is looking for Pigou as a criminal but even more as a human being who has lost his way. And Pigou is looking for Maigret, not in his role as detective, but in his role as doctor and priest, mender of destinies.

The Paradox of Maigret as Detective and Priest

If Maigret sometimes plays a priestly role, it is, as I have noted above, the role of priest as confessor and confidant. This role is not that different from "a benevolent older brother to whom one could tell everything" Le Revolver de Maigret (Maigret's Revolver] is even more explicit than Maigret et le Marchand de Vins in asserting this priestly role.

The story begins with the phone call from Madame Maigret telling her husband that a young man is in the apartment to see him. Maigret doesn't take the situation seriously and, as he often did, stops for a few minutes at the Brasserie Dauphine for a drink with a former colleague. By the time Maigret arrives home, the young man has departed, taking Maigret's revolver with him. Maigret's friend, Dr. Pardon, tells him of a patient in desperate straits who would like to meet Maigret, Francois Lagrange, who turns out to be the father of the boy who had stolen Maigret's revolver. The rest of the story is spent tracking down Francois Lagrange, who has murdered an important official, and pursuing the boy who has set out to murder the woman who is blackmailing his father. The father is arrested, and Maigret's assistant Janvier goes through his apartment looking for clues. He discovers in a folder several articles on Maigret cut from newspapers. It seems Lagrange has cut out articles that portray Maigret as the defender of the guilty. One of the articles calls Maigret a bon enfant, "good natured"; another is titled, "The humanity of Maigret" (Le Revolver 107). Lagrange has underlined the words "indulgence" and "comprehension" Another passage tells the story of a man condemned to death who had refused the ministry of a priest but asked if he could have a final interview with Maigret. This theme of convicted criminals asking for Maigret as a priestly presence at the moment of death recurs in Les Memoires de Maigret: "I could cite several (of these convicted criminals)," says Maigret, "who have begged me to be present at their execution and have reserved for me their final regard" (151). All these articles that Lagrange had saved explain why he wanted to meet Maigret.

Toward the end of the story, Maigret, in England where he has followed the son Alain Lagrange, intent on killing the woman who was the real culprit, finally enters the hotel room where he knows Alain is hiding. With exquisite patience and a delicacy that perfectly exemplifies the characteristics described in the collected newspaper stories of Francois Lagrange, Maigret waits. Here Maigret is both detective and priest. He knows the young man is armed and at the end of his wits, capable of doing anything. Maigret has an interest as a detective in getting the young man to surrender the gun before he becomes a criminal himself. But he uses a method supplied by his humanity rather than his police training. He identifies with the young man: "At your age," says Maigret, "in your condition, I might have done the same thing" (Le Revolver 153). Maigret even admits it was his fault; if he hadn't stopped for a drink he would have arrived home before the young man left.

When the young man finally comes out from under the bed, he asks Maigret "Why are you doing all this?" "All what?" Maigret responds. "You know what I mean," Alain replies. "Maybe" Maigret goes on, "it's because I was a young man too. And because I had a father" (Le Revolver 158). Later in the same chapter, Maigret becomes more explicit: "I lost my mother when I was very young and my father raised me" (163). Maigret's ability to enter into the deepest experience of those he is tracking, which leads often enough to the apprehension of the guilty person, serves in this case to prevent a crime and to put on the right path a young man who has lost his way.

Maigret's Virtues

The preceding review of the paradoxes of Maigret has revealed a set of related virtues: humility, the ability to enter into the lives other people, a determination to understand and not to judge, and, above all, compassion. These are human virtues and Christian virtues. They are precisely the human virtues Christ encouraged in the Gospels. Specifically, they are the attitudes and habits Jesus taught in the famous "Sermon on the Mount" (Matthew 5-7), including the beatitudes, and the "Sermon on the Plain" that includes Jesus' admonition, "Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven" (Luke 6:37). One of Simenon's biographers, Lucille Becker, after noting in Simenon's work "the repeated references to the Catholic atmosphere of his youth," comments on Simenon's and Maigret's refusal to judge others and its connection to Church teaching: "The maxim, 'comprendre sansjuger (to understand without judging), at the heart of Simenon's philosophy of life--expressed as Maigret's moral code--might seem to reflect the Church's understanding of and compassion for the sinner" (8). Here too we find a paradox. The man who best embodied these virtues and served as a model for Maigret was Simenon's father, Desire, the less religious but probably more Christian of his parents. Simenon's overtly religious mother, the one who saw that he served as an altar boy and attended Catholic schools, was notably lacking in compassion, particularly toward her husband. Her decision to take student boarders into the Simenon home as a way of supplementing her husband's meager earnings effectively reduced Desire to the status of an inmate whose needs became secondary to those of the paying boarders and awakened a deep resentment in Georges Simenon against his mother, even though he profited from the presence of the foreign students in the Simenon home, learned their language, and used them as the basis of characters in his novels (Bresler 18-20; Assouline 10-11). Henriette continued to complain to her husband about turning down a better job in another city and for not buying an insurance policy even though he was an insurance salesman. As it turned out, the insurance company had refused to sell a policy to Simenon's father because of his precarious health, a fact he hid from his wife. But instead of understanding, she judged--that trait so foreign to both Simenon and Maigret--and harbored resentment.

If we want to uncover the roots of Maigret's virtues in the life of his creator, we need also to look beyond the model he found in his father and consider Simenon's early religious life. We have seen that he suddenly abandoned religion at the age of fifteen after learning that his beloved father was terminally ill. Simenon's discovery of sex at the age of twelve and his need, once awakened, for an active sexual life added motivation to renounce the Church whose rigid sexual morality presented the young Simenon with an impossible burden. But Simenon did not, by his own admission, abandon certain aspects of the faith he had so fervently followed up until the age of fifteen. For he was not just an altar boy because his mother wanted it; he entered into the life represented by serving at the altar. Even when the Friar Superior of the Institut St. Andre, Bresler tells us, where Simenon was a student, forced him to lie about an incident he and his brother were involved in, "he remained firmly a believer, bending low before the Cross" (21). Simenon, again according to Bresler, had an intense interior life of which religious mysticism was a manifestation. Given a common characteristic of Simenon and Maigret, their "aptitude for living the lives of others and for immersing themselves in a milieu" (Assouline 93), it is reasonable to suppose that the young Simenon entered deeply into the religious atmosphere of his first fifteen years.

And so we have an author, Simenon, and his principal fictional creation, Maigret, who, while not outwardly religious, manifest deeply Christian sensibilities. Augustine himself in the fifth century anticipated this distinction. In opposing the Donatists who demanded heroic adherence to the Christian faith, condemning those who had handed over the holy books to avoid persecution, Augustine affirmed a truth that seems to apply to Simenon. The Donatists had a rigid criterion for membership in the Church, perfect fidelity. For Augustine, it was not so easy to determine who was inside the Church and who was outside. "For in that unspeakable foreknowledge of God, many who seem to be without are actually within (the Church), and many who seem to be within, yet really are without" (On Baptism Against the Donatists, IV. 27-38, p. 477, col. 2). Simenon's mother may have seemed to be squarely in the Church, but her lack of compassion sets her outside. Simenon and, our principal concern here, Maigret, may seem to be outside, but their compassion brings them within the sphere of the Gospels' central teachings.

Hugh of St Victor (1096-1141), philosopher, theologian, and mystical writer, wrote a short treatise on the four wills of Christ in which he develops the idea of compassion as ideal humanity) The Church had long since defined that Christ had both a divine and a human will. Hugh subdivided the human will into a rational will (voluntas secundum rationem), the will of the flesh, (voluntas secundum carnem), and the will of tender pity (voluntas secundum pietatem). The rational will is that by which Christ followed the Father's plan for him, the will of the flesh is the resistance Christ instinctively felt at the thought of undergoing the passion, and the will of compassion or tender pity is Jesus' capacity to enter into the sufferings of other people. After Hugh has elaborated on this quality of compassion in Jesus, he goes on to promote the idea of compassion as constituting the ideal of humanity for everyone. Maigret embodies the ideal. We have seen this compassion worked out in some detail in Maigret's attitude toward Little John in Maigret New York, Pigou in Maigret et le Marchand de Vins, and Alain Lagrange in Le Revolver de Maigret. Maigret's compassion appears in some way in all of the novels that have appeared in this article. Compassion is a priestly quality, not as necessarily pertaining to the clergy but to that deeper sort of priesthood that belongs to all Christians, making them, ideally if not in fact, children of a merciful God following Jesus' admonition: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36). Compassion characterizes people of other religions too and many non-religious people--like Maigret--who come to it through the mysterious workings of their own inner lives. It sums up what is most appealing about Simenon's Maigret.

Conclusion

This essay has tried to develop a view of Simenon's Maigret based on a series of interconnected paradoxes that seem to have Christian roots even though they appear in a secular guise. The first paradox is the Incarnation itself that lies at the core of Christianity and seems to be reflected in Maigret's habit of entering in to the lives of those who inhabit the world he investigates. Another, related, paradox appears in Maigret's conception of his vocation as a detective, a vocation that is explicitly priestly? Maigret is detective, "mender of destinies, and priest." He is all three at once--this is the paradox. Simenon develops this paradoxical vocation through further paradoxes, the method that is not a method, the hunter who is being hunted, the policeman who is also a priest. I have argued that underneath all these particular paradoxes lies another, the presence of Christian traits in a hero who does not profess Christianity, an unbelieving hero created by an author who stopped believing in God at age fifteen. One does not need to be a Christian to manifest the qualities that Simenon attributes to his hero. But the fact that both the author, Simenon, and his character, Maigret, began life as devout Christians in Catholic Belgium and France suggests that perhaps a residue of their early piety might be traceable in Maigret's character and methodology. Simenon did recognize the profound effect of his early Christian education "That education marks you for life, even if you stopped believing (as I have) all you were taught long ago" (qtd. in Becker, 8).

Maigret's encounters with criminals makes one think at times of Jesus' encounters with sinners in the Gospel. Over and over again, the Pharisees accuse Jesus of eating and drinking with sinners. Just as Jesus regarded with contempt the righteousness of the religious establishment of his time, Maigret separates himself definitively from the judges and investigators whose work is motivated by a desire to protect privilege rather than a desire to find the truth, especially the deep human truth of people whose lives have strayed from righteous paths.

Rene Girard's criterion for separating great literature from merely good literature is whether the author can see his characters from the perspective of their common humanity without raising his heroes, alter egos, to a place of superiority over other humans. Girard came to this insight, as a kind of intellectual conversion, when he was working on the last chapter of his first book, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. He noticed that some great novelists moved from an earlier conception of their work to a later one. The first draft was "an attempt at self-justification" (Williams 284) either focusing on "a wicked hero, who is really the writer's scapegoat, his mimetic rival" or "a knight in shining armor, with whom the writer identifies." This first project fails somehow, and the author realizes that "The self-justification he had intended in his distinction between good and evil will not stand self-examination. The novelist comes to realize that he has been the puppet of his own devil. He and his enemy are truly indistinguishable" (284). This realization is "shattering to the vanity and pride of the writer" and this experience, which Girard calls "an existential downfall" is often enough "written symbolically, as illness or death, in the conclusion" (284).

Whether Simenon moved from an earlier, more superficial conception of his work as a writer to a more profound one as described by Girard, I do not know. Perhaps a comparison of Simenon's 190 pre-Maigret novels, written under a variety of pseudonyms, with the Maigret novels he wrote under his own name and his later even more serious novels, the so-called roman clurs or hard novels, might provide some clues. Even as a student in the Jesuit high school in Liege, Simenon would sign his essays "Georges Sim" saying that only when he had written something worthy of his real name would he sign it (Bresler 26). This suggests that Simenon himself saw in the post-1930 Maigret stories, published under his own name, a form of literature significantly elevated above the earlier pseudonymous writings. (5) What that superiority consisted in could be the subject of another essay.

But whatever the history of his development as an author, it seems evident that, in his character Maigret, Simenon has achieved a deeply human character who understands that he is no better and no worse than the people he is charged to investigate and who is therefore able to enter their lives as mender of destinies, detective, and priest at the same time.

Seattle University

WORKS CITED

Assouline, Pierre. Simenon: A Biography. Trans. Jon Rothschild. New York: Knopf, 1997. (French ed. 1992).

Augustine. On Nature and Grace (De Natura et Gratia). The Works of Saint Augustine: Translation for the 2U Century. Trans. Roland J. Teske, S.J. Hyde Park: New York City Press, 1997. Vol. 23, 241.

--. On Baptism Against the Donatists. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Vol. IV. Ed. Philip Schaff. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979.

Becket, Lucille F. Georges Simenon: Maigrets and the romans durs. New York: Twayne, 1999.

Bresler, Fenton. The Mysteries of George Simenon: A Biography. New York: Stein and Day, 1983.

Chesterton, G.K. The Father Brown Omnibus. New York: Dodd, 1943.

Coolman, Boyd Taylor. "Hugh of St. Victor on 'Jesus Wept.'" Theological Studies 69.3 (September 2008): 528-56.

Forest, Jean. Les Archives Maigret. Les Presses de l'Universite de Montreal, 1994. Gorsset, Philip. "Clerical Detectives and some other crime fiction" Web. <http://www.detecs.org> 19 March 2010.

Ignatius of Loyola. Spiritual Exercises. Trans. Louis J. Puhl, S.J. Westminister, Maryland: Newman, 1960.

Lemoine, Michel. "The method of investigation according to Maigret: A methodical absence of method?" Maigret Forum. Web. <http://www.trussel.com/maig/lemoine.htm> 19 March 2010.

Marnham, Patrick. The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1992.

Merivale, Patricia, and Susan Elizabeth Sweeny, eds. Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Postmodernism. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1999.

Le Petit Robert I. Paris, 1985.

Simenon, Georges. La Premiere Enquete de Maigret. Paris: U.G.E. Poche, Presses de la Cite 1948.

--. La Tete d'un Homme. Paris: Fayard, 1931.

--. Le Charretier de la Providence. Paris: Fayard, 1931.

--. Le Chien Jaune. Paris: Presses Pocket, 1931.

--. Le Revolver de Maigret. Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1952.

--. Les Memoires de Maigret. Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1950.

--. Maigret a New York. Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1946.

--. Maigret et l'Homme du Banc. Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1952.

--. Maigret et la Vielle Dame. Paris: Presses de la Cite 1950.

--. Maigret et le Client du Samedi. Paris: Presses de la Cite 1962.

--. Maigret et le Corps Sans Tete. Paris: Presses de la Cite 1955.

--. Maigret et le Marchand de Vins. Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1969.

--. Maigret et le Tueur. Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1969.

--. Maigret et son Mort. Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1948.

--. Maigret Hesite. Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1968.

--. Maigret S'Amuse. Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1956.

--. Maigret se Defend. Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1964.

--. Pietr le Letton. Paris: Fayard, 1931.

--. Quand J'etais Vieux. Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1970.

--. Un Crime en Hollande. Paris: Presses Pocket, 1931.

Symons, Julian. Mortal Consequences. New York: Schoken, 1972.

Williams, James G., ed. The Girard Reader. 1996. New York: Crossroads, 2007.

Peter B. Ely, S.J.

NOTES

(1) Georges Simenon (1903-1989) was probably the most prolific author of the twentieth century. The exact number of his works is difficult to ascertain. According to one of his biographers, he wrote 573 works (Becker viii), among them the famous Maigret series. Becker lists seventy-seven Maigret works in her bibliography; Patrick Marnham lists seventy-six, but lean Forest has published the names, characters, and plots of 107 Maigret stories. Becker lists 114 romans durs, hard or serious novels, the category that first won Simenon recognition as a serious novelist. Before the Maigret stories and the romans durs, Simenon's career began with a series of 190 "potboilers" under various pseudonyms that earned him a large amount of money and prepared him for the more serious Maigret novels, most of which were published under his own name.

(2) Michel Lemoine in his article "The method of investigation according to Maigret: A methodical absence of method?" notes that this process of identification, though not present in all Maigret stories is present in a significant number. In addition to the novels I have cited, Lemoine adds another twelve. I recommend Lemoine's article as an excellent treatment of the deep humanity of Maigret's method and, in particular, of his practice of entering into the lives of the characters he investigates.

(3) See the article "Hugh of St. Victor on 'Jesus Wept,'" by Boyd Taylor Coolman.

(4) Many mystery stories feature detectives who are actually ordained priests or ministers. One can find a list on the website, "Clerical Detectives and some other crime fiction, selected by Philip Gorsset." Some of these stories are written by priests, some feature a priest or minister as the central character. The list is extensive. One of the best known is Chesterton's Father Brown. To see how their priesthood influences the method of these detectives and to compare these influences with the priestly dimension of Maigret's method would be an interesting study.

(5) Lucille Becker comments on Simenon's stature as a writer. Until the 1970s, after he had actually stopped writing novels, Simenon was, according to Becker "dismissed as an author of detective novels, a genre relegated to the status of paraliterature" (vii). Even though he had written more roman durs ("hard" or serious novels) than Maigret stories, Simenon's fame rested more on the Maigret works, which had been translated into multiple languages and become the subject of about forty films. In 2003 the critical evaluation of Simenon's work changed when his home town of Liege in Belgium celebrated the centenary of his birth, an event which enabled him to take his place among the great writers of the modern era. "In May of 2003," says Becker, "Georges Simenon took his place in the pantheon of letters, alongside distinguished writers like Hemingway, Montaigne, Dostoevsky, and Proust, with the publication of 21 of his novels in two volumes of Gallimard's prestigious collection, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade" (vii). Five of the 21 were Maigret novels. So it seems that Simenon's Maigret tales form part of the basis on which his reputation as a great writer rests. In Maigret, Simenon has created a character comparable to Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean or Balzac's Pere Goriot.