Diotimos Library · Literary Fiction Collection · Bilingual Edition
The Gods Are Athirst
Les Dieux ont soif · Complete French–English bilingual edition
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English Page · Branch 58 of 120
Chapter XI · Paragraphs 49–59
Edition pages
Printed pages in the supplied Diotimos 2026 bilingual edition.
- French
- Diotimos 2026 pp. 238, 240
- English
- Diotimos 2026 pp. 239, 241
French
"Évariste, vous êtes beau, vous êtes bon, vous êtes généreux! Dans cette salle, le son de votre voix, mâle et douce, me traversait tout entière de ses ondes magnétiques. J’en étais électrisée. Je vous contemplais à votre banc. Je ne voyais que vous. Mais vous, mon ami, vous n’avez donc pas deviné ma présence? Rien ne vous a averti que j’étais là? Je me tenais dans la tribune, au second rang, à droite. Mon Dieu! qu’il est doux de faire le bien! Vous avez sauvé ce malheureux. Sans vous, c’en était fait de lui: il périssait. Vous l’avez rendu à la vie, à l’amour des siens. En ce moment, il doit vous bénir. Évariste, que je suis heureuse et fière de vous aimer!"
Se tenant par le bras, serrés l’un contre l’autre, ils allaient par les rues, se sentant si légers qu’ils croyaient voler.
Ils allaient à l'Amour peintre. Arrivés à l’Oratoire:
"Ne passons pas par le magasin", dit Élodie.
Elle le fit entrer par la porte cochère et monter avec elle à l’appartement. Sur le palier, elle tira de son réticule une grande clef de fer.
"On dirait une clef de prison, fit-elle. Évariste, vous allez être mon prisonnier."
Ils traversèrent la salle à manger et furent dans la chambre de la jeune fille.
Évariste sentait sur ses lèvres la fraîcheur ardente des lèvres d’Élodie. Il la pressa dans ses bras. La tête renversée, les yeux mourants, les cheveux répandus, la taille ployée, à demi évanouie, elle lui échappa et courut pousser le verrou....
La nuit était déjà avancée quand la citoyenne Blaise ouvrit à son amant la porte de l’appartement et lui dit tout bas, dans l’ombre:
"Adieu, mon amour! C’est l’heure où mon père va rentrer. Si tu entends du bruit dans l’escalier, monte vite à l’étage supérieur et ne descends que quand il n’y aura plus de danger qu’on te voie. Pour te faire ouvrir la porte de la rue, frappe trois coups à la fenêtre de la concierge. Adieu, ma vie, adieu, mon âme!"
Quand il se trouva dans la rue, il vit la fenêtre de la chambre d’Élodie s’entrouvrir et une petite main cueillir un œillet rouge qui tomba à ses pieds comme une goutte de sang.
English
“Évariste, you are handsome, you are good, you are generous! In that chamber the sound of your voice, manly and gentle, sent magnetic waves through my whole body. I was electrified. I gazed at you on your bench. I saw only you. But you, my friend—did you never guess I was there? Did nothing tell you? I was in the gallery, in the second row on the right. My God, how sweet it is to do good! You saved that unfortunate man. Without you he was done for: he would have died. You have restored him to life and his family’s love. He must be blessing you at this very moment. Évariste, how happy and proud I am to love you!”
Arm in arm, pressed close together, they walked through the streets, feeling so light that they thought they were flying.
They were going to L’Amour peintre. When they reached the Oratoire, Élodie said:
“Let’s not go through the shop.”
She brought him in through the carriage entrance and took him upstairs to the apartment. On the landing she drew a large iron key from her reticule.
“It looks like a prison key,” she said. “Évariste, you are going to be my prisoner.”
They crossed the dining room and entered the young woman’s bedroom.
On his lips Évariste felt the burning freshness of Élodie’s. He clasped her in his arms. Her head thrown back, her eyes languishing, her hair loose, her body bent, half fainting, she slipped from him and ran to shoot the bolt…
It was late at night when Citizen Blaise opened the apartment door for her lover and whispered to him in the darkness:
“Goodbye, my love! It’s time for my father to come home. If you hear a noise on the stairs, hurry up to the next floor and don’t come down until there’s no danger of being seen. To have the street door opened, knock three times on the concierge’s window. Goodbye, my life; goodbye, my soul!”
Once he was in the street he saw Élodie’s bedroom window open a little and a small hand pick a red carnation, which fell at his feet like a drop of blood.
Socrates
Reading The Gods Are Athirst · Chapter XI · Chapter XI · Paragraphs 49–59
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.