French · Advanced
Read Le Capitaine Fracasse in Frenchwith every sentence explained
English title: Captain Fracasse
Théophile Gautier · 1863
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About the book
Le Capitaine Fracasse by Théophile Gautier was first published in 1863. In Passage you read the full text in the original French, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 185,500 words.
A penniless young baron, a crumbling castle, and a troupe of actors knocking at the door on a stormy night.
In the reign of Louis XIII, the young Baron de Sigognac lives in poverty in his ruined castle in the wild Landes of Gascony, with only an old servant, a scrawny cat and a faithful dog for company. His noble name is all he has left.
One rainy evening, a travelling company of actors asks for shelter. Among them is Isabelle, a gentle young actress, and Sigognac is captivated. He decides to leave his ruins behind and follow the troupe on the road to Paris, and when one of the actors dies along the way, the baron takes his place on stage, behind a mask and a new name: Captain Fracasse. Ahead lie duels, ambushes and a proud young duke who wants Isabelle for himself.
Théophile Gautier's swashbuckling novel is a feast of colour and adventure, filmed several times, notably with Jean Marais in 1961.
- Author
- Théophile Gautier
- First published
- 1863
- Language
- French
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 185,500 words
How it opens
Sur le revers d’une de ces collines décharnées qui bossuent les Landes, entre Dax et Mont-de-Marsan, s’élevait, sous le règne de Louis XIII, une de ces gentilhommières si communes en Gascogne, et que les villageois décorent du nom de château.
Deux tours rondes, coiffées de toits en éteignoir, flanquaient les angles d’un bâtiment, sur la façade duquel deux rainures profondément entaillées trahissaient l’existence primitive d’un pont-levis réduit à l’état de sinécure par le nivelage du fossé, et donnaient au manoir un aspect assez féodal, avec leurs échauguettes en poivrière et leurs girouettes à queue d’aronde.
Reading Le Capitaine Fracasse in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in French. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate French book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
