Thesis novel, The gods are thirsty on the idea that hell is paved with good intentions. To do Anatole France revisits the historic episode of Terror and staged an idealistic young painter Evariste Gamelin, who became sworn Revolutionary Court claim. The plot is quite classic but effective mixing history and romance, sewing together expected or typical situations and characters.
This however leaves classicism released its artificiality because of the brevity of the novel: the scenes are often striking but it lacks a little life in this mechanism. The evolution of Gamelin character and his lover Elodie include reports simplistic default details; The same historical events have a minimum of explanation that can hinder. The style also shows the limits of classicism: if fair and concise, it is also impersonal.
The most interesting is elsewhere, first in successful transcription of a time when politics mingled with everyday life, where the purer ideals were embodied in violence and in speeches and vagaries of its secondary characters including that of Epicuriste and skeptical Brotteaux (double personified the author).
The gods are thirsty is a well-made novel, short and sweet, morality still valid, which is not, however, believes his past (in 1950, laid the Curb among the twelve best novels of the half-century). Anatole France proves a good craftsman, but what distance separates it from Flaubert or Proust!
