Diotimos Library · Literary Fiction Collection · Bilingual Edition
The Gods Are Athirst
Les Dieux ont soif · Complete French–English bilingual edition
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French Page · Branch 13 of 120
Chapter II · Paragraphs 8–9
Edition pages
Printed pages in the supplied Diotimos 2026 bilingual edition.
- French
- Diotimos 2026 pp. 22, 24
- English
- Diotimos 2026 pp. 23, 25
French
C’était le citoyen Maurice Brotteaux, ancien traitant, ci-devant noble: son père, enrichi dans les partis, avait acheté une savonnette à vilain. Au bon temps, Maurice Brotteaux se nommait monsieur des Ilettes et donnait, dans son hôtel de la rue de la Chaise, des soupers fins que la belle madame de Rochemaure, épouse d’un procureur, illuminait de ses yeux, femme accomplie, dont la fidélité honorable ne se démentit point tant que la Révolution laissa à Maurice Brotteaux des Ilettes ses offices, ses rentes, son hôtel, ses terres, son nom. La Révolution les lui enleva. Il gagna sa vie à peindre des portraits sous les portes cochères, à faire des crêpes et des beignets sur le quai de la Mégisserie, à composer des discours pour les représentants du peuple et à donner des leçons de danse aux jeunes citoyennes. Présentement, dans son grenier, où l’on se coulait par une échelle et où l’on ne pouvait se tenir debout, Maurice Brotteaux, riche d’un pot de colle, d’un paquet de ficelles, d’une boîte d’aquarelle et de quelques rognures de papier, fabriquait des pantins qu’il vendait à de gros marchands de jouets, qui les revendaient aux colporteurs, qui les promenaient par les Champs-Élysées, au bout d’une perche, brillants objets des désirs des petits enfants. Au milieu des troubles publics et dans la grande infortune dont il était lui-même accablé, il gardait une âme sereine, lisant pour se récréer son Lucrèce, qu’il portait constamment dans la poche béante de sa redingote puce.
Évariste Gamelin poussa la porte de son logis, qui céda tout de suite. Sa pauvreté lui épargnait le souci des serrures, et quand sa mère, par habitude, tirait le verrou, il lui disait: "A quoi bon? On ne vole pas les toiles d’araignée... et les miennes pas davantage." Dans son atelier s’entassaient, sous une couche épaisse de poussière ou retournées contre le mur, les toiles de ses débuts, alors qu’il traitait, selon la mode, des scènes galantes, caressait d’un pinceau lisse et timide des carquois épuisés et des oiseaux envolés, des jeux dangereux et des songes de bonheur, troussait des gardeuses d’oies et fleurissait de roses le sein des bergères.
English
This was Citizen Maurice Brotteaux, once a tax contractor and formerly a nobleman: his father, enriched by government contracts, had bought himself a patent to wash away his common birth. In the good days Maurice Brotteaux had called himself Monsieur des Ilettes, and in his mansion in the Rue de la Chaise had given exquisite suppers brightened by the eyes of the beautiful Madame de Rochemaure, a public prosecutor’s wife, an accomplished woman whose honourable fidelity never faltered so long as the Revolution left Maurice Brotteaux des Ilettes his offices, his income, his mansion, his estates and his name. The Revolution took them from him. He earned his living painting portraits in gateways, making pancakes and fritters on the Quai de la Mégisserie, composing speeches for the people’s representatives and giving dancing lessons to young female citizens. At present, in his attic, reached by a ladder and too low to stand upright in, Maurice Brotteaux, rich in a pot of glue, a bundle of string, a box of watercolours and a few scraps of paper, made jumping jacks. He sold them to wholesale toy dealers, who sold them to pedlars, who carried them about the Champs-Élysées on the end of a pole, glittering objects of little children’s desire. Amid the public turmoil and the great misfortune that had fallen on him, he kept a serene spirit, reading his Lucretius for recreation; the book was always with him in the gaping pocket of his puce frock coat.
Évariste Gamelin pushed at his door, which gave way at once. Poverty spared him the trouble of locks, and when his mother shot the bolt out of habit he would say, “What’s the use? Nobody steals spiders’ webs… or my canvases either.” His early canvases lay piled in the studio, under a thick layer of dust or turned to the wall. In those days he had painted fashionable scenes of gallantry, caressing with a smooth, timid brush exhausted quivers and flown birds, dangerous games and dreams of happiness, lifting goose girls’ skirts and flowering shepherdesses’ breasts with roses.
Socrates
Reading The Gods Are Athirst · Chapter II · Chapter II · Paragraphs 8–9
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Anatole France’s The Gods Are Athirst follows the painter Évariste Gamelin as revolutionary conviction draws him into the work of the Revolutionary Tribunal. This complete French–English edition preserves the novel’s twenty-nine chapters, paired by source paragraph, with an introduction, historical orientation, glossary, and chapter notes.
Historical Text and Translation
The novel appeared in volume in 1912. The complete French reading text follows Project Gutenberg eBook 36477, whose underlying impression is undated and carries a later Brodard & Taupin colophon. Chapter I was also checked against a separate 1912 printing; that limited collation is distinguished from the source used for the whole novel.
About Diotimos Editions
The new English translation and editorial matter were generated and revised with AI for Diotimos Editions. The reader preserves the supplied paragraph pairing, songs, quoted letters, and 431 chapter notes, together with the source register and the edition’s statement of editorial responsibility.
Rights
Anatole France’s French source work is in the public domain. The new 2026 English translation and Diotimos editorial matter are credited as supplied in this bilingual edition.