Diotimos Library · Literary Fiction Collection · Bilingual Edition
The Gods Are Athirst
Les Dieux ont soif · Complete French–English bilingual edition
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Facing Pages · Branch 93 of 120
Chapter XXIII · Paragraphs 1–4
Edition pages
Printed pages in the supplied Diotimos 2026 bilingual edition.
- French
- Diotimos 2026 p. 416
- English
- Diotimos 2026 p. 417
French
Évariste Gamelin était las et ne pouvait se reposer; vingt fois dans la nuit, il se réveillait en sursaut d’un sommeil plein de cauchemars. C’était seulement dans la chambre bleue, entre les bras d’Élodie, qu’il pouvait dormir quelques heures. Il parlait et criait en dormant et la réveillait; mais elle ne pouvait comprendre ses paroles.
Un matin, après une nuit où il avait vu les Euménides, il se réveilla brisé d’épouvante et faible comme un enfant. L’aube traversait les rideaux de la chambre de ses flèches livides. Les cheveux d’Évariste, mêlés sur son front, lui couvraient les yeux d’un voile noir: Élodie, au chevet du lit, écartait doucement les mèches farouches. Elle le regardait, cette fois, avec une tendresse de sœur et, de son mouchoir, essuyait la sueur glacée sur le front du malheureux. Alors il se rappela cette belle scène de l'Oreste d’Euripide, dont il avait ébauché un tableau qui, s’il avait pu l’achever, aurait été son chef-d’œuvre: la scène où la malheureuse Électre essuie l’écume qui souille la bouche de son frère. Et il croyait entendre aussi Élodie dire d’une voix douce: "Écoute-moi, mon frère chéri, pendant que les Furies te laissent maître de ta raison...."
Et il songeait:
"Et pourtant, je ne suis point parricide. Au contraire, c’est par piété filiale que j’ai versé le sang impur des ennemis de ma patrie."
English
Évariste Gamelin was weary and could find no rest; twenty times a night he started awake from a sleep full of nightmares. Only in the blue room, in Élodie’s arms, could he sleep for a few hours. He spoke and cried out in his sleep and woke her; but she could not understand his words.
One morning, after a night in which he had seen the Eumenides, he awoke shattered with terror and weak as a child. Dawn pierced the bedroom curtains with its livid arrows. Évariste’s hair, tangled across his forehead, covered his eyes with a black veil; beside the bed Élodie gently brushed the wild locks away. This time she looked at him with a sister’s tenderness and, with her handkerchief, wiped the cold sweat from the unhappy man’s forehead. Then he remembered that beautiful scene in Euripides’ Orestes for which he had sketched a painting that, had he been able to finish it, would have been his masterpiece: the scene in which the unhappy Electra wipes the foam that soils her brother’s mouth. And he seemed to hear Élodie too saying softly: “Listen to me, my dear brother, while the Furies leave you master of your reason.…”
And he thought:
“And yet I am no parricide. On the contrary, it was from filial piety that I shed the impure blood of my country’s enemies.”
Socrates
Reading The Gods Are Athirst · Chapter XXIII · Chapter XXIII · Paragraphs 1–4
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.