Read "The Gods are Athirst" by Anatole France online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Employing a very old-fashioned locution, the _citoyenne_ Gamelin had declared: "that by dint of eating chestnuts they would be turning into chestnuts." As a matter of fact, on that day, the 13th July, she and her son had made their midday dinner on a basin of chestnut porridge. As they were finishing this austere repast, a lady pushed open the door and the room was flooded in an instant with the splendour of her presence and the fragrance of her perfumes. Evariste recognised the _citoyenne_ Rochemaure. Thinking she had mistaken the door and meant her visit for the _citoyen_ Brotteaux, her friend of other days, he was already preparing to point her out the _ci-devant_ aristocrat's garret or perhaps summon Brotteaux and so spare an elegant woman the task of scrambling up a mill-ladder; but she made it clear at once that the _citoyen_ Evariste Gamelin and no other was the person she had come to see by announcing that she was happy to find him at home and was his servant to command.
They were not entirely strangers to each other, having met more than once in David's studio, in a box at the Assembly Hall, at the Jacobins, at Venua's restaurant. On these occasions she had been struck by his good looks and youth and interesting air.