Notre-Dame de Paris

French reading practice with side-by-side translation

 Reading comprehension: See the links at the bottom for lessons related to the phrases in italics.

Notre-Dame de Paris. 1482, de Victor Hugo Notre Dame of Paris. 1482, by Victor Hugo
Livre premier – La grand’salle

Il y a aujourd’hui trois cent quarante-huit ans six mois et dix-neuf jours que les Parisiens s’éveillèrent au bruit de toutes les cloches sonnant à grande volée dans la triple enceinte de la Cité, de l’Université et de la Ville.

Translation

Book I – The Great Room

As of today, it’s been three hundred forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days since Parisians woke up to the sound of all the church bells pealing out in the triple set of walls around the fortified city, university, and town.

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Ce n’est cependant pas un jour dont l’histoire ait gardé souvenir que le 6 janvier 1482. Rien de notable dans l’événement qui mettait ainsi en branle, dès le matin, les cloches et les bourgeois de Paris. Ce n’était ni un assaut de Picards ou de Bourguignons, ni une châsse menée en procession, ni une révolte d’écoliers dans la vigne de Laas, ni une « entrée de notredit très redouté seigneur monsieur le roi », ni même une belle pendaison de larrons et de larronnesses à la Justice de Paris. Ce n’était pas non plus la survenue, si fréquente au quinzième siècle, de quelque ambassade chamarrée et empanachée.
Translation

Yet 6 January 1482 is not a day that history has remembered. There was nothing noteworthy in the event that set in motion, that morning, the bells and the citizens of Paris in this way. It wasn’t an assault by the people of Picardy or Burgundy, nor a shrine carried in a procession, nor a revolt of schoolkids in the Laas vineyard, nor the "arrival of our much feared lord the king," nor even a nice hanging of thieves, male and female, at the Parisian court. And it wasn’t the unexpected arrival, so common in the fifteenth century, of some bedecked and plumed embassy officials.

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Il y avait à peine deux jours que la dernière cavalcade de ce genre, celle des ambassadeurs flamands chargés de conclure le mariage entre le dauphin et Marguerite de Flandre, avait fait son entrée à Paris, au grand ennui de M. le cardinal de Bourbon, qui, pour plaire au roi, avait dû faire bonne mine à toute cette rustique cohue de bourgmestres flamands, et les régaler, en son hôtel de Bourbon, d’une « moult belle moralité, sotie et farce », tandis qu’une pluie battante inondait à sa porte ses magnifiques tapisseries.

Translation

It had been barely two days since the last procession of this kind, that of the Flemish ambassadors charged with concluding the marriage between the Dauphin and Marguerite de Flanders, had made its entry into Paris, to the great annoyance of the Cardinal of Bourbon who, to please the king, had had to receive this whole rustic crowd of Flemish burgomasters, and regale them, at his Bourbon hotel, with a "very beautiful morality play, satire and farce," while driving rain drenched his magnificent tapestries at the door.

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Le 6 janvier, ce qui « mettoit en émotion tout le populaire de Paris », comme dit Jehan de Troyes, c’était la double solennité, réunie depuis un temps immémorial, du jour des Rois et de la Fête des Fous.
Translation

On 6 January, what "was putting all of Paris in turmoil," as Jehan de Troyes put it, was the double solemnity, associated since time immemorial, of Twelfth Night and the Feast of Fools.

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  Translation by LKL
Notre Dame de Paris est un roman français classique. Écrit en 1831, il est dans le domaine public. Téléchargez l’original en format électronique pour lire la suite gratuitement :

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Notre Dame of Paris is a classic French novel. It was written in 1831 and is now in the public domain. The best-known English translation is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. You can download and read a free translation at Gutenberg.
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 Notre dame de Paris, de Victor HugoReading comprehension

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