From the book
The Gods Are Athirst
Anatole France · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordRaison d’État is the justification of conduct by the state’s overriding preservation or interests.
- In the novelAfter Herman’s humane judicial ideals are bounded by national security, the narrator states that the old monarchical idea of reason of state inspires the Revolutionary Tribunal.
- In this editionThe English uses plural “reasons of state” for singular raison d’État while retaining “divine right”.
- A place to readles crimes commis contre la souveraineté nationale: Crimes against national sovereignty.
Meaning
Phrase.
Raison d’État is the justification of conduct by the state’s overriding preservation or interests. Droit divin is divine right, the grounding of sovereign authority in a religious claim. In this passage the narrator brings the two inherited languages of rule together.
Use in the book
After Herman’s humane judicial ideals are bounded by national security, the narrator states that the old monarchical idea of reason of state inspires the Revolutionary Tribunal. The judges of liberty’s enemies work on principles of divine right. This is a direct narratorial diagnosis of institutional continuity, not merely Brotteaux’s satire.
The contrast is not that reform has done nothing: the passage explicitly describes the abolition of torture and cruel punishments and the narrowing of ordinary capital offences. It is that exceptional crimes against the new sovereign preserve a logic of absolute power.
Widow Gamelin’s religious awe at the judicial power of life and death offers a domestic version of this continuity. Brotteaux reaches contempt rather than reverence from the same comparison. The lexical pairing explains why political change need not transform the underlying grounds of coercion.
Places to read
- Chapter IX, paragraph 2Frenchles crimes commis contre la souveraineté nationale: Crimes against national sovereignty. Herman treats their capital punishment as a duty to the state.
- Chapter IX, paragraph 3Frenchla raison d’État: Reason of state. The narrator calls the idea old and monarchical.
- Chapter IX, paragraph 3Frenchles principes du droit divin: Principles of divine right. The new tribunal is said to judge enemies of liberty by inherited principles.
- Chapter IX, paragraph 37Frenchson droit de vie et de mort: His power of life and death. The mother reveres judges through a religious understanding of their authority.
Translation in this edition
The English uses plural “reasons of state” for singular raison d’État while retaining “divine right”. The interpretive point concerns the stated continuity of justification, not a documentary claim that the Tribunal formally adopted a royal constitutional doctrine.