Level A1 · Lesson 5
Who is Arsène Lupin?
Qui est Arsène Lupin ?
At dinner everybody talks about Arsène Lupin: he burgles châteaux, he has a thousand disguises and he leaves his calling card. Old Ganimard is after him. The narrator just listens, quietly.
The story
Le soir, à table, tout le monde parle d’Arsène Lupin.
In the evening, at dinner, everybody is talking about Arsène Lupin.
Lupin est un voleur, mais un voleur élégant. Il cambriole les châteaux et les salons de Paris.
Lupin is a thief, but an elegant thief. He burgles the châteaux and the drawing rooms of Paris.
Il vole des bijoux, des tableaux et des meubles anciens. Il aime les belles choses.
He steals jewels, paintings and antique furniture. He loves beautiful things.
Il a mille déguisements. Il est chauffeur, ténor, médecin russe, torero espagnol…
He has a thousand disguises. He is a chauffeur, a tenor, a Russian doctor, a Spanish bullfighter…
Une nuit, il entre chez le baron Schormann. Il cherche des meubles anciens, mais les meubles sont faux.
One night he gets into Baron Schormann’s house. He is looking for antique furniture, but the furniture is fake.
Alors Lupin laisse seulement sa carte de visite, avec un petit mot très poli.
So Lupin leaves only his calling card, with a very polite little note.
Le vieux Ganimard, le meilleur policier de France, cherche Lupin depuis des mois.
Old Ganimard, the best detective in France, has been looking for Lupin for months.
Miss Nelly regarde les passagers. « Nous voyageons avec un voleur ! C’est terrible ! »
Miss Nelly looks at the passengers. “We are travelling with a thief! It’s terrible!”
Moi, j’écoute en silence. Je trouve l’histoire très amusante.
Me, I listen in silence. I find the story very amusing.
Vocabulary
- parler: to speak, to talk
- voler: to steal; to fly
- cambrioler: to burgle
- aimer: to like, to love
- entrer: to go in, to come in
- chercher: to look for
- laisser: to leave (something)
- regarder: to look at, to watch
- voyager: to travel
- écouter: to listen (to)
- trouver: to find
- le voleur / le cambrioleur: the thief / the burglar
- le château: the château
- le salon: the drawing room, the lounge
- les bijoux (m.): jewels
- le tableau: the painting
- le meuble: the piece of furniture
- le déguisement: the disguise
- la carte de visite: the calling card
- le policier: the police officer, the detective
- le chauffeur: the chauffeur, the driver
- le ténor: the tenor (singer)
- le médecin: the doctor
- le torero: the bullfighter
- ancien / ancienne: old, antique
- faux / fausse: fake, false
- poli / polie: polite
- vieux / vieille: old
- terrible: terrible
- russe: Russian
- espagnol / espagnole: Spanish
-er verbs in the present tense
The -er verbs are the biggest family in French: thousands of them, and nearly all perfectly regular. New verbs join it too: surfer, googler. Learn one and you know them all. The recipe: take off -er to get the stem (parl-), then add the ending for the person.
| parler | ||
|---|---|---|
| je | parle | I speak, I am speaking |
| tu | parles | you speak (one friend) |
| il / elle / on | parle | he / she speaks, one speaks |
| nous | parlons | we speak |
| vous | parlez | you speak (polite, or several) |
| ils / elles | parlent | they speak |
Now the good news. Five written endings, but only three sounds. Parle, parles and parlent are all pronounced exactly “parl”. The -es is silent, and so is the -ent of ils parlent: never say “parl-ent”, and never say it like the English word “parent”. Only nous parlons (“-on”) and vous parlez (“-ay”) sound different. So in speech, the subject pronoun is what tells you who is talking.
Two small spelling rules. When the verb starts with a vowel, je shrinks: j’aime, j’écoute, j’entre. And verbs in -ger keep an e before -ons, so that the g stays soft like in “beige”: nous voyageons, not ✗ nous voyagons.
One tense, two Englishes. The French present covers both “he steals” and “he is stealing”. Il vole des bijoux can mean that stealing jewels is his job, or that he is doing it right now, while you are reading. Context decides.
Leblanc in the original
«Arsène Lupin, l'homme aux mille déguisements: tour à tour chauffeur, ténor, bookmaker, fils de famille, adolescent, vieillard, commis-voyageur marseillais, médecin russe, torero espagnol!»Arsène Lupin, the man of a thousand disguises: by turns chauffeur, tenor, bookmaker, rich man’s son, teenager, old man, travelling salesman from Marseille, Russian doctor, Spanish bullfighter!