The Gods Will Have Blood [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONNew readers are advised that this Introduction makes the details of the plot explicit.In 1896, Anatole France was elected a member of I*Académie franfaise, a highly coveted honour in those days as well as good business for an author. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.Anatole France's election to I*Académie franfaise was not without much opposition. His attacks on Church and State had earned him many enemies on the Right. One of the aristocratic establishment said to him on the eve of the election: * Everything in your writings, monsieur, shocks my beliefs. But genius is a gift of God. I should oppose the wiU of heaven if I did not vote for you.' Another promised to vote for France, but trusted he would not be successfid, 'since I have never heard of a case where a superior man was elected the first time*. On hearing of this, France remarked dryly: 'He must have made several applications himself.'His award of the Nobel Prize in 1921 was in spite of his vehement denunciations of the Versailles Treaty and his continuous attacks on the Githolic Church. Some of his books had been banned in libraries before the award. After it, all his books without exception were 'placed on the Index* by the Roman Curia because of 'excess of utterances that were communistic and anti-clerical in tone'. When he went to Stockholm to receive the Prize he is reported to have said regarding the Treaty of Versailles: 'The most horrible of wars was followed by a treaty which was not a treaty of peace but a prolongation of the war.'In 1896, as was customary for a newly elected member I*Académiefranfaise^ France had to deliver a eulogistic address about his predecessor. He had succeeded to de Lesseps' chair and in his address there was nothing that could offend any of the traditionalists. For that reason it has been much dted