The Gods Are Athirst (French: Les dieux ont soif) was published by Calmann-Lévy in 1912. The title comes from Camille Desmoulins’s cry at the height of the Terror: “The gods are athirst” — meaning that the Revolution, like the ancient gods, demands human blood. The novel is set in Paris during 1793-1794, the period of the Terror, and follows Évariste Gamelin — a mediocre painter and sincere patriot — as he is appointed to the Revolutionary Tribunal and becomes an instrument of mass execution.
Gamelin is not a monster. He is an idealist: he genuinely believes in the Revolution’s principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and he genuinely believes that the Republic’s enemies must be eliminated to protect those principles. His progression from idealism to fanaticism is gradual, logical, and psychologically convincing. Each execution makes the next easier; each denunciation confirms the rightness of the last. By the end, Gamelin is sending people to the guillotine on the flimsiest evidence, utterly convinced of his own virtue.
France’s analysis of revolutionary psychology is devastating because it is sympathetic. He does not portray the terrorists as evil but as sincere — and demonstrates that sincerity, combined with absolute certainty, produces evil more efficiently than cynicism ever could. The novel is a study in how good intentions become murder when combined with political power and ideological rigidity.
The novel draws on France’s deep knowledge of the Revolutionary period — his details of daily life, political rhetoric, and social atmosphere are historically precise — and on his lifelong meditation on the relationship between ideas and violence.
Collecting The Gods Are Athirst
First edition (Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1912): French text, original wrappers.
Market values:
- French first edition, fine: $40–$100
- First English translation (John Lane, 1913): $20–$60