Far more interesting for ordinary reading is his pseudo-novel, _The Gods are Athirst_. In that book he tells the story of a Jacobin, Gamelin, living through the Revolution of 1789, active terrorist, ready to sacrifice sister, mother, sweetheart, upon the altar of liberty, hard, narrow in the forehead, obsessed. Anatole France leads us through sumptuous scenes, the murder of Marat, the death of Robespierre, while Gamelin every day grows more bloodthirsty, more pitiless. The creature is marvellously living, for in his madness and his blood-lust he responds to all the affectations of revolutionary days, the personal oppositions between the red hands and the white hands, to the ridiculous imitation of Roman citizenship which led to men calling themselves Brutus or Cicero. Yet the ridiculous is not without its nobility, for Gamelin falls at last a victim to the guillotine, and then says, splendidly: “I die justly. It is well that we should bear those insults levelled at the republic against which we should have protected it. We were weak, we have been guilty of indulgence. We have betrayed the republic.... Robespierre himself, pure and saintly, sinned by gentleness, by pity ... I have spared blood, let my blood flow.” That is not so extraordinary as it seems, for Gamelin, the executioner, believes in virtue, in a high ideal and, as everybody should know, there is no creature in the world so brutal and so venomous as one who is working for the good of mankind. The virtue of the book is not in the history, but in Anatole France’s acute consciousness of the things that happen while history is being made. There are picnics, talks about art; there is a sentimental amourette between Brotteaux, the old aristocrat, and a sweet courtesan; there is an old priest who does not mind having his head cut off, but does object in court to being called a Capuchin when he really is a Barnabite. It is all deeply human, and one scene at least is unforgettable, a love scene. (Of course ... those are mostly unforgettable.) It is not the recurrent scene between Gamelin and his mistress who, by the way, and it is a charming irony, invites his rival to her bedroom on the day of Gamelin’s execution in exactly the words she used to Gamelin himself; it is a scene on the day when Charlotte Corday murdered Marat. There is a great crowd and Gamelin, in the press, meets his friend Desmahis. He tries to detain him to talk about Marat, but Desmahis is almost in tears; he curses the crowd, he was following a fair-haired girl, a shopgirl, a divine girl, and the crowd has parted them. “But Marat ...” says Gamelin. “Marat, Marat!” growls Desmahis. “That’s all very well, but I’ve lost my fair-haired girl.” It is hard to realise that men follow shopgirls while empires fall, but it is most likely, and I suspect that Anatole France thinks it more important.