DiotimosReading Desk

Body

Mystical beast

bête mystique

The image names the jury as a collective organism, formed from people diverse in education, courage, temperament and sincerity.

From the book

The Gods Are Athirst

Anatole France · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Meaning

Phrase.

The image names the jury as a collective organism, formed from people diverse in education, courage, temperament and sincerity. Its natural functioning produces death. Mystique links the group’s unified passion to faith, while bête makes that unity bodily and resistant to reason. The same paragraph admits abrupt merciful acquittals: the creature is capricious, not a machine whose every individual decision is identical.

Places to read

  1. Chapter XV, paragraph 1Frenchune bête mystique: a mystical beast. The narrator joins diverse jurors into one deaf, angry head and one soul.