Novel: The Gods Are Athirst

Overview
Set in Paris during 1793–1794, The Gods Are Athirst follows the arc of Evariste Gamelin, a young Jacobin painter whose austere republican virtue curdles into implacable zeal when he becomes a juror on the Revolutionary Tribunal. Anatole France counterpoints Gamelin’s militancy with the humane skepticism of Brotteaux des Ilettes, a ruined former tax farmer, and with the sensual devotion of Elodie Blaise, a print-seller’s daughter who loves Gamelin but watches his conscience dissolve under the pressure of ideology and power. The novel charts the Terror from its intoxicated idealism to its self-consuming violence, ending in the Thermidorian Reaction that sweeps away its own architects.

Gamelin and Elodie
Gamelin begins as a sincere, poor artist devoted to Rousseauian purity and the sovereignty of the people. His talent cannot secure patronage in a city seized by politics, yet his virtue attracts the Jacobin Club and local patriots, who push him into the Tribunal. Elodie, ardent and practical, loves him fiercely; her father’s shop trades in patriotic prints that feed the revolutionary fervor. At first Elodie exults in Gamelin’s severity, believing stern justice will secure his reputation and their future. As the guillotine’s rhythm quickens and the law of suspects widens, her pride shades into fear and estrangement. Her yearning for a private happiness collides with his vow to sacrifice all intimacies to the Republic.

Brotteaux and the counterpoint of skepticism
Brotteaux, once wealthy, now fashions toys to survive and shelters the gentle Capuchin Longuemare. He reads Lucretius, argues for tolerance, and practices modest kindness amid the city’s suspicions. Their conversations offer a lucid, melancholy critique of dogma: a trust in reason that rejects both superstition and the new civil religion. France gives these scenes a classical clarity, setting Brotteaux’s steady humanity against the clamorous certainties of the clubs and committees. Inevitably, charity becomes a crime; Brotteaux and Longuemare are arrested and, after a perfunctory hearing, go to the scaffold with a composure that makes their deaths an indictment of the regime’s justice.

The Tribunal and the widening gyre
As a juror under Fouquier-Tinville, Gamelin applies the law with a conscience that has fused with doctrine. He prides himself on impartiality, yet the logic of purity admits no innocence. Accused nobles, wavering patriots, petty offenders, and the merely denounced pass before him; he condemns strangers and acquaintances alike, persuading himself that the salvation of the people requires the blood of the few, then of the many. Festivals of the Supreme Being, civic processions, and oratory brighten the streets even as prisons fill. France shows a city intoxicated by symbolism and fear, where virtue is measured by ruthlessness and tenderness is treason.

Thermidor and reckoning
Robespierre’s fall unseals a swift reversal. The men who served the Terror are exposed to the same machinery they set in motion. Gamelin is arrested, confronted by the sorrow he has sown, and judged with the haste he once applauded. Elodie, torn between love and horror, can do nothing but witness the wheel turn. Gamelin meets the guillotine not as a martyr but as a man crushed by the inevitability of the logic he embraced.

Themes and legacy
France’s irony is cool and devastating. The novel dissects how high ideals, once armed with power and simplified into doctrine, demand sacrifice without end. Private love, art, and pity wither before the abstraction of the public good. Brotteaux’s Epicurean doubt and Elodie’s intimate desire stand as fragile antidotes to fanatic certainty, yet both are overrun. The title’s claim that the gods are athirst names a perennial hunger: whenever men enthrone their Idea, the altar is never dry.