The Gods are Athirst by Anatole France

On the afternoon of the same day Evariste set out to see the _citoyen_ Jean Blaise, printseller, as well as dealer in ornamental boxes, fancy goods and games of all sorts, in the Rue Honore, opposite the Oratoire and near the office of the Messageries, at the sign of the _Amour peintre_. The shop was on the ground floor of a house sixty years old, and opened on the street by a vaulted arch the keystone of which bore a grotesque head with horns. The semicircle beneath the arch was occupied by an oil-painting representing "the Sicilian or Cupid the Painter," after a composition by Boucher, which Jean Blaise's father had put up in 1770 and which sun and rain had been doing their best to obliterate ever since. On either side of the door a similar arched opening, with a nymph's head on the keystone arch glazed with the largest panes to be got, exhibited for the benefit of the public the prints in vogue at the time and the latest novelties in coloured engravings.

To-day's display included a series of scenes of gallantry by Boilly, treated in his graceful, rather stiff way, _Lecons d'amour conjugal_, _Douces resistances_ and the like, which scandalized the Jacobins and which the rigid moralists denounced to the Society of Arts, Debucourt's _Promenade publique_, with a dandy in canary-coloured breeches lounging on three chairs, a group of horses by the young Carle Vernet, pictures of air balloons, the _Bain de Virginie_ and figures after the antique.