French · Advanced
Read Les Misérables – Tome I : Fantine in Frenchwith every sentence explained
English title: Les Misérables, Vol. I: Fantine
Victor Hugo · 1862
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About the book
Les Misérables – Tome I : Fantine by Victor Hugo was first published in 1862. In Passage you read the full text in the original French, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction. It runs to about 109,100 words.
A convict walks free after nineteen years. A bishop's mercy changes everything.
In 1815, Jean Valjean leaves the galleys with a yellow passport that marks him as dangerous. Every inn turns him away, until the gentle Bishop Myriel of Digne opens his door, and Valjean repays him in a way neither of them expects.
Years later, in the town of Montreuil-sur-Mer, a respected factory owner called Monsieur Madeleine is doing quiet good. Meanwhile Fantine, a young mother abandoned in Paris, leaves her little Cosette with an innkeeper couple and struggles to pay for her keep. And the relentless Inspector Javert never forgets a face.
Les Misérables, Vol. I: Fantine opens Victor Hugo's monumental story of justice, guilt and grace. It is the root of the world-famous musical and countless films, and this first volume stands on its own as a gripping tale.
- Author
- Victor Hugo
- First published
- 1862
- Language
- French
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction
- Length
- About 109,100 words
How it opens
En 1815, M. Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel était évêque de Digne. C'était un vieillard d'environ soixante-quinze ans; il occupait le siège de Digne depuis 1806.
Quoique ce détail ne touche en aucune manière au fond même de ce que nous avons à raconter, il n'est peut-être pas inutile, ne fût-ce que pour être exact en tout, d'indiquer ici les bruits et les propos qui avaient couru sur son compte au moment où il était arrivé dans le diocèse. Vrai ou faux, ce qu'on dit des hommes tient souvent autant de place dans leur vie et surtout dans leur destinée que ce qu'ils font. M.
Reading Les Misérables – Tome I : Fantine 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.
