The Gods Are Athirst

Outline of the Novel

This outline gives the sequence of the complete story and reveals its ending.

Chapter I

At the former Barnabite church Gamelin signs a petition against political opponents.

Dupont admits that universal attendance would leave the patriots in a minority.

Trubert works on recruitment, weapons and relief while military crises close in.

The narrator ends with the resolve of obscure men who face victory or death.

Chapter II

Gamelin returns through the renamed Place Dauphine to his subdivided building.

He meets Brotteaux, who now makes jumping jacks and reads Lucretius.

His studio reveals the conflict between his artistic aspirations, political ideals and poverty.

His mother discusses hunger, remembers royal executions and recalls his compassionate childhood.

A country girl recognises her absent fiancé in a generic volunteer watercolour and buys it.

Chapter III

Gamelin visits Blaise’s print shop and watches Élodie examine currency.

Élodie courts him through her embroidery while he expounds an austere artistic programme.

Her thoughts reveal her independence and the economic obstacle to their union.

Blaise rejects the proposed revolutionary cards and argues that revolutionary enthusiasm has exhausted itself.

Gamelin renews his faith and seeks Desmahis, encountering an execution procession and his friend’s pursuit of a milliner.

Chapter IV

Gamelin awaits Élodie at a fashionable rustic refreshment garden.

An old wafer seller explains her poverty through politics and portents.

Élodie guides Gamelin towards a mutual declaration of love.

Her departure by carriage gives him a vision of a world he cannot enter.

He encounters Marat’s triumphal return after acquittal and renews his patriotic devotion.

Chapter V

Élodie arranges a private conversation because Gamelin insists upon an open union.

She confesses a previous attachment while withholding the man’s identity.

Gamelin invents an aristocratic émigré seducer; the narrator identifies a clerk turned sans-culotte dragoon.

The lovers pass a handsome soldier addressing a crowd, whom Élodie hastens to leave.

Brotteaux shares a capon with the Gamelins and develops a Rabelaisian reflection on ignorance and happiness.

Chapter VI

A hungry crowd waits in oppressive heat outside a bakery.

Gamelin and Brotteaux discuss artistic subjects, revolutionary justice and the death penalty.

A false accusation of purse theft nearly destroys an old religious and his defenders.

Brotteaux meets Longuemare; the three men dispute morality, nature, religion and reason.

Brotteaux reads Lucretius, and Gamelin receives the final bread.

Gamelin gives half his ration to a starving mother and conceals his generosity from his own mother.

Chapter VII

On 13 July Rochemaure and Henry visit the Gamelins.

Gamelin explains his Orestes painting and its Greek literary source.

Rochemaure’s social and speculative networks are revealed behind a proposed commission.

She seeks access to Marat and offers to procure Gamelin a Revolutionary Tribunal position.

On the way to Marat’s house they hear of his assassination.

Popular grief, accusation and Gamelin’s terror contrast with a peasant woman’s mistaken identification.

Chapter VIII

Élodie and Gamelin inspect preparations for the festival celebrating the accepted constitution.

She tells him her father has escaped an accusation of fraudulent supplies; his silence troubles the narrative.

Gamelin gives her a ring bearing Marat’s head.

Rochemaure announces his appointment as a juror and reveals her expectation of judicial protection.

Henry criticises the Tribunal as insufficiently severe.

The mother rejoices in honour and income, while Brotteaux compares judgement by passion with Rabelais’ judicial dice.

Chapter IX

Gamelin visits Herman and Fouquier and discovers old legal habits beneath revolutionary offices.

Bookshops and Desmahis offer pleasures indifferent to Gamelin’s civic severity.

A general’s trial teaches Gamelin to prefer patriotic punishment to individual innocence.

The section demands severity; Gamelin asserts judicial independence and Trubert defends the Tribunal.

His mother, Brotteaux, Desmahis and Élodie respond differently to his new authority.

Jean Blaise cultivates the juror and invites him on a commercial sketching excursion.

Chapter X

The excursion leaves Paris; Desmahis narrowly escapes arrest after being called Barbaroux.

Artistic theories and fashion talk accompany the approach to Orangis.

The party sketches and discusses theatre; Thévenin’s charm unsettles simple oppositions of nature and artifice.

At the Bell Inn the grandmother, sick child and servant embody other forms of rural life.

Gamelin compares Élodie with Werther’s Charlotte; dinner reveals the guests’ views of appetite.

Pelleport offers a confident explanation of Tronche’s body.

Forfeits lead to Voltaire, an operatic romance and an anti-monastic song.

Desmahis’s arrangements culminate in his encounter with the sleeping servant.

The group returns to Paris with an abundance of roses.

Chapter XI

Rochemaure visits Brotteaux in his attic and hears his predictions about the Tribunal.

Henry steals her letter for England and brings it to the Committee of General Security.

Gamelin sits as a juror and helps secure an acquittal for lack of proof.