Félix Nadar, 1888 (public domain)
Free French reading, level B2
Learn French with Contes du jour et de la nuit, Maupassant's short stories
Short enough to finish in an evening, sharp enough to remember for years — Maupassant's exact, economical French.
Learn French with this book for freeContes du jour et de la nuit collects Maupassant's short stories, some comic, some genuinely unsettling, each one short enough to finish in a single sitting. His prose is famously economical, precise and stripped of anything extra, which means every word actually earns its place. Lira keeps Maupassant's own French on the page, but every unfamiliar word is one tap away from a translation, and every word you look up gets scheduled for review so it actually sticks.
Key vocabulary from Contes du jour et de la nuit
A preview of the words you'll run into early on, with pronunciation. Every one of them, and every other word you tap while reading, gets saved to your review deck automatically.
le facteur
postman
constater
to notice, observe
ressentir
to feel (an emotion)
flâner
to stroll, idle about
le bourg
small market town
la besogne
task, chore, work
What actually happens while you read
One tap to translate
Click any unfamiliar word for its contextual translation, right inside the page. No dictionary tab, no losing your place in the story.
Every word saved with its sentence
The word you looked up keeps the exact sentence you found it in, not an isolated flashcard, so the meaning stays anchored to real context.
FSRS brings it back before you forget
Spaced repetition schedules each word's next review right before you'd naturally lose it, so vocabulary from this book actually stays with you.
Ce jour-là le Boniface, en sortant de la maison de poste, constata que sa serait moins longue que de , et il en ressentit une joie vive.
TRANSLATION
postman, mailman
CONTEXT
Ce jour-là le facteur Boniface, en sortant de la maison de poste, constata que sa tournée serait moins longue que de coutume, et il en ressentit une joie vive.
Start reading free →The science
Recognizing a word isn't the same as remembering it
According to Stephen Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis, a language is acquired durably through exposure to content you mostly already understand, not through isolated word lists. Reading a real book supplies exactly that kind of exposure. Spaced repetition on top of it is what turns a word you translated once into one you actually remember weeks later.
Learning approach
Retention with Lira
Start learning French with Contes du jour et de la nuit today
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