Advanced stories
Original French stories written for this level, with comprehension questions.
Short stories
20 original stories written for this level, each with a comprehension check.
Le voisin du dessus
In his diary, a retired history teacher in Lyon gathers evidence against the upstairs neighbor who paces above his head every night.
Le dîner des vertueux
At a Paris dinner party, three couples compete to prove who lives the most ethical, planet-friendly life.
L'horloger de la rue des Granges
Every year on the same day, a widow brings the same stopped pocket watch to a watchmaker in Besançon.
La plume d'emprunt
An Abidjan speechwriter is hired to write a groom's wedding speech, and the bride turns out to be the woman who once left him.
L'entretien
A young recruiter at a Lyon start-up interviews a fifty-seven-year-old candidate who doesn't play by her rules.
La voisine idéale
A retired woman in Bordeaux describes everything she does to help the young nurse who has moved in across the landing.
La dernière nuit du gardien
On the night before his lighthouse is automated, a Breton keeper keeps watch for the last time.
Joyeux anniversaire, Lou
An Instagram mother in Annecy stages her daughter's fifth birthday for her forty-eight thousand followers.
L'affaire du chat Moustique
In a village in the Drôme, the mayor tries to settle a bitter dispute between two neighbors who both claim the same cat.
L'interprète
During a tense negotiation in Brussels, an interpreter chooses not to translate an insult word for word.
Mémoires d'un parapluie
A proud umbrella, waiting at the Paris lost property office, tells the story of its many owners.
La maison de Honfleur
A brother and sister clearing out their late mother's house in Normandy find a box of letters addressed to someone they have never heard of.
Le coach
An exhausted executive at La Défense hires a life coach, who transforms his life in unexpected ways.
Les mardis de Claire
A husband in Toulouse becomes convinced that his wife is hiding something every Tuesday afternoon.
Le guide de Québec
A tour guide in Old Quebec who embellishes his stories is challenged by a know-it-all Parisian in his group.
La file d'attente
A Parisian woman joins a long queue in the Marais without knowing what it is for.
Le tailleur de la rue Blanchot
A Dakar tailor knows that his most demanding customer is not the important man he claims to be.
L'été des cerises
An old cherry grower in the Ardèche reluctantly hires a Syrian engineer for the harvest.
Le double
A cautious Geneva actuary keeps being told he was seen in places he has never been.
Le silence de monsieur Lambert
A notoriously talkative retired notary loses a bet and must stay silent for a whole family holiday in Saint-Malo.
Nonfiction
20 original articles: explainers, news-style pieces, columns and workplace texts, each with a comprehension check.
Le dernier kiosque
A Lyon columnist learns that the newspaper kiosk at the foot of his street is about to close, and goes to say goodbye to the man who runs it.
Column
Éloge de la file d'attente
A Parisian columnist defends the queue outside his bakery, and tells the story of an elderly woman who never misses it.
Column
Lettre à celle qui me succède
A teacher retiring from a one-class village school in the Cantal writes to the young woman who will take over her classroom in September.
Letter
Une nuit de garde
A reporter spends a Saturday night with the pharmacist on duty in a small town in the Vosges, behind the little night hatch.
Reportage
La faute au mistral
A columnist in Avignon reflects on the Provençal habit of blaming the mistral for everything, and on what happened when the wind stopped.
Column
Le car rapide
A travel writer in Dakar takes one of the city's famous painted minibuses, gets on the wrong one, and finds out what the young conductor hanging off the back is really for.
Travel writing
Le traversier de Tadoussac
On the free ferry across the Saguenay fjord in Quebec, a French traveller is taken in hand by a talkative retired woman who has made the crossing thousands of times.
Travel writing
Lettre des Marquises
A young nurse posted on the remote island of Hiva Oa writes to her mother in Nantes, who keeps asking when she is coming home.
Letter
Une nuit à Ouessant
A storm strands a travel writer on the island of Ouessant, off Brittany, where an old former lighthouse keeper keeps watch at his window.
Travel writing
Le volcan poli
On Réunion Island, a traveller who missed the chance to see the Piton de la Fournaise erupt meets an old woman who once watched its lava stop at a church door.
Travel writing
L'erreur de Méchain
In 1805, the astronomer Delambre opens the papers of his late colleague Méchain, who helped him measure the meridian that would define the metre, and finds a secret.
History
Paris sous les eaux
During the great Paris flood of January 1910, a young sewer worker rowing through the streets is called to the aid of the landlady who has been threatening to evict him.
History
Les quatre crochets
A Louvre guard looks back on August 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its wall, and on the workman in a white smock he had nodded to that morning.
History
Le compteur tournait
In September 1914, a Paris taxi driver is requisitioned to drive soldiers to the front, and one of his passengers hands him a letter to post if he does not come back.
History
Les bras du télégraphe
In 1836, a young operator on the Chappe telegraph line near Tours learns from a dying colleague how two Bordeaux bankers had been secretly using the state's signals.
History
La lueur du hangar
In 1902, the caretaker of a Paris science school cannot understand why Pierre and Marie Curie keep coming back to their freezing shed at night.
Science
La couleur des nymphéas
At Giverny in the early 1920s, a young gardener becomes the eyes of an old painter who is losing his sight while trying to finish his greatest work.
Art
Le repentir de Lascaux
A painter who copies the cave paintings of Lascaux for a replica discovers a hesitation left by an artist some eighteen thousand years ago, and must decide whether to copy it.
Art
Le pendule du Panthéon
In the spring of 1851, a grieving widow keeps returning to the Panthéon to watch Léon Foucault's pendulum, which claims to show the Earth turning.
Science
L'ex-voto
A reporter follows a Marseille art restorer as she cleans a small nineteenth-century votive painting of a ship in a storm, and a forgotten name comes back to light.
Reportage