<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<p class="center"><big><big>THE WORKS OF
ANATOLE FRANCE</big></big></p>
<p class="center">IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN</p>
<h1>THE GODS ARE ATHIRST</h1>
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<h1>THE GODS ARE<br/> ATHIRST</h1>
<h2> BY ANATOLE FRANCE </h2>
<div class="figcenter"><ANTIMG style="width: 81px; height: 57px;" alt="Rose" title="Rose" src="images/roseleft.png" /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A TRANSLATION BY MRS. WILFRID JACKSON</span> <ANTIMG style="width: 66px; height: 57px;" alt="Rose" title="Rose" src="images/roseright.png" /></div>
<div class="figcenter"><ANTIMG style="width: 339px; height: 275px;" alt="Frontispiece" title="Frontispiece" src="images/front2.png" /></div>
<h3>NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY</h3>
<h3> LONDON JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD</h3>
<h3>TORONTO BELL COKBURN MCMXIV </h3>
<p class="center">Copyright, 1913 by<br/>
JOHN LANE COMPANY</p>
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<h1>THE GODS ARE ATHIRST</h1>
<h2>I</h2>
<p><ANTIMG class="figleft" style="width: 96px; height: 106px; float: left;" alt="Initial É" title="É" src="images/lete.png" />variste
Gamelin, painter, pupil of David, member
of the Section du
Pont-Neuf, formerly Section Henri IV, had betaken himself at an early
hour in the morning to the old church of the Barnabites, which for
three
years, since 21st May 1790, had served as meeting-place for the General
Assembly of the Section. The church stood in a narrow, gloomy square,
not far from the gates of the Palais de Justice. On the
façade, which
consisted of two of the Classical orders superimposed and was decorated
with inverted brackets and flaming urns, blackened by the weather and
disfigured by the hand of man, the religious emblems had been battered
to pieces, while above the doorway had been inscribed in black letters
the Republican catchword of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death."
Évariste Gamelin made his way into the nave; the same vaults
which had
heard the surpliced clerks of the Congregation of St. Paul sing the
divine offices, now looked down on red-capped patriots assembled to
elect the Municipal magistrates and deliberate on the affairs of the
Section. The Saints had been dragged from their niches and replaced by
the busts of Brutus, Jean-Jacques and Le Peltier. The altar had been
stripped bare and was surmounted by the Table of the Rights of Man.</p>
<p>It was here in the nave that twice a week, from five in the
evening to
eleven, were held the public assemblies. The pulpit, decorated with the
colours of the Nation, served as tribune for the speakers who harangued
the meeting. Opposite, on the Epistle side, rose a platform of rough
planks, for the accommodation of the women and children, who attended
these gatherings in considerable numbers.</p>
<p>On this particular morning, facing a desk planted underneath
the pulpit,
sat in red cap and <i>carmagnole</i> complete the joiner
from the Place
Thionville, the <i>citoyen</i> Dupont senior, one of the
twelve forming the
Committee of Surveillance. On the desk stood a bottle and glasses, an
ink-horn, and a folio containing the text of the petition urging the
Convention to expel from its bosom the twenty-two members deemed
unworthy.</p>
<p>Évariste Gamelin took the pen and signed.</p>
<p>"I was sure," said the carpenter and magistrate, "I was sure
you would
come and give in your name, <i>citoyen</i> Gamelin. You
are the real thing.
But the Section is lukewarm; it is lacking in virtue. I have proposed
to
the Committee of Surveillance to deliver no certificate of citizenship
to any one who has failed to sign the petition."</p>
<p>"I am ready to sign with my blood," said Gamelin, "for the
proscription
of these federalists, these traitors. They have desired the death of
Marat: let them perish."</p>
<p>"What ruins us," replied Dupont senior, "is indifferentism. In
a Section
which contains nine hundred citizens with the right to vote there are
not fifty attend the assembly. Yesterday we were eight and twenty."</p>
<p>"Well then," said Gamelin, "citizens must be obliged to come
under
penalty of a fine."</p>
<p>"Oh, ho!" exclaimed the joiner frowning, "but if they all
came, the
patriots would be in a minority.... <i>Citoyen</i>
Gamelin, will you drink a
glass of wine to the health of all good sansculottes?..."</p>
<p>On the wall of the church, on the Gospel side, could be read
the words,
accompanied by a black hand, the forefinger pointing to the passage
leading to the cloisters: "<i>Comité civil,
Comité de surveillance, Comité
de bienfaisance.</i>" A few yards further on, you came to the
door of the
erstwhile sacristy, over which was inscribed: <i>Comité
militaire</i>.</p>
<p>Gamelin pushed this door open and found the Secretary of the
Committee
within; he was writing at a large table loaded with books, papers,
steel
ingots, cartridges and samples of saltpetre-bearing soils.</p>
<p>"Greeting, <i>citoyen</i> Trubert. How are you?"</p>
<p>"I?... I am perfectly well."</p>
<p>The Secretary of the Military Committee, Fortuné
Trubert, invariably
made this same reply to all who troubled about his health, less by way
of informing them of his welfare than to cut short any discussion on
the
subject. At twenty-eight, he had a parched skin, thin hair, hectic
cheeks and bent shoulders. He was an optician on the Quai des
Orfèvres,
and owned a very old house which he had given up in '91 to a
superannuated clerk in order to devote his energies to the discharge of
his municipal duties. His mother, a charming woman, whose memory a few
old men of the neighbourhood still cherished fondly, had died at
twenty;
she had left him her fine eyes, full of gentleness and passion, her
pallor and timidity. From his father, optician and mathematical
instrument maker to the King, carried off by the same complaint before
his thirtieth year, he inherited an upright character and an
industrious
temperament.</p>
<p>Without stopping his writing:</p>
<p>"And you, <i>citoyen</i>," he asked, "how are
you?"</p>
<p>"Very well. Anything new?"</p>
<p>"Nothing, nothing. You can see,—we are all quiet
here."</p>
<p>"And the situation?"</p>
<p>"The situation is just the same."</p>
<p>The situation was appalling. The finest army of the Republic
blockaded
in Mayence; Valenciennes besieged; Fontenay taken by the
Vendéens; Lyons
rebellious; the Cévennes in insurrection, the frontier open
to the
Spaniards; two-thirds of the Departments invaded or revolted; Paris
helpless before the Austrian cannon, without money, without bread!</p>
<p>Fortuné Trubert wrote on calmly. The Sections being
instructed by
resolution of the Commune to carry out the levy of twelve thousand men
for La Vendée, he was drawing up directions relating to the
enrolment
and arming of the contingent which the "Pont-Neuf," erstwhile "Henri
IV," was to supply. All the muskets in store were to be handed over to
the men requisitioned for the front; the National Guard of the Section
would be armed with fowling-pieces and pikes.</p>
<p>"I have brought you here," said Gamelin, "the schedule of the
church-bells to be sent to the Luxembourg to be converted into cannon."</p>
<p>Évariste Gamelin, albeit he had not a penny, was
inscribed among the
active members of the Section; the law accorded this privilege only to
such citizens as were rich enough to pay a contribution equivalent in
amount to three days' work, and demanded a ten days' contribution to
qualify an elector for office. But the Section du Pont-Neuf, enamoured
of equality and jealous of its independence, regarded as qualified both
for the vote and for office every citizen who had paid out of his own
pocket for his National Guard's uniform. This was Gamelin's case, who
was an <i>active</i> citizen of his Section and member of
the Military
Committee.</p>
<p>Fortuné Trubert laid down his pen:</p>
<p>"<i>Citoyen</i> Évariste," he said, "I
beg you to go to the Convention and
ask them to send us orders to dig up the floor of cellars, to wash the
soil and flag-stones and collect the saltpetre. It is not everything to
have guns, we must have gunpowder too."</p>
<p>A little hunchback, a pen behind his ear and a bundle of
papers in his
hand, entered the erstwhile sacristy. It was the <i>citoyen</i>
Beauvisage,
of the Committee of Surveillance.</p>
<p>"<i>Citoyens</i>," he announced, "we have bad
news: Custine has evacuated
Landau."</p>
<p>"Custine is a traitor!" cried Gamelin.</p>
<p>"He shall be guillotined," said Beauvisage.</p>
<p>Trubert, in his rather breathless voice, expressed himself
with his
habitual calmness:</p>
<p>"The Convention has not instituted a Committee of Public
Safety for fun.
It will enquire into Custine's conduct. Incompetent or traitor, he will
be superseded by a General resolved to win the victory,—and <i>ça
ira!</i>"</p>
<p>He turned over a heap of papers, scrutinizing them with his
tired eyes:</p>
<p>"That our soldiers may do their duty with a quiet mind and
stout heart,
they must be assured that the lot of those they leave behind at home is
safeguarded. If you are of the same opinion, <i>citoyen</i>
Gamelin, you will
join me in demanding, at the next assembly, that the Committee of
Benevolence concert measures with the Military Committee to succour the
families that are in indigence and have a relative at the front."</p>
<p>He smiled and hummed to himself: "<i>Ça ira!
ça ira!...</i>"</p>
<p>Working twelve and fourteen hours a day at his table of
unpainted deal
for the defence of the fatherland in peril, this humble Secretary of
the
Sectional Committee could see no disproportion between the immensity of
the task and the meagreness of his means for performing it, so filled
was he with a sense of the unity in a common effort between himself and
all other patriots, so intimately did he feel himself one with the
Nation at large, so merged was his individual life in the life of a
great People. He was of the sort who combine enthusiasm with
long-suffering, who, after each check, set about organizing the victory
that is impossible, but is bound to come. And verily they <i>must</i>
win the
day. These men of no account, who had destroyed Royalty and upset the
old order of things, this Trubert, a penniless optician, this
Évariste
Gamelin, an unknown dauber, could expect no mercy from their enemies.
They had no choice save between victory and death. Hence both their
fervour and their serenity.</p>
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