FRENCH READER With Notes and Vocabulary BY GEORGE W. ROLLINS Boston PREFACE. THE aim of this book is to furnish interesting matter suitable for first readings in French. The selections are taken from fiction, history, poetry, and the drama. The condensed extract from Marbot's Memoirs, which describes Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Moscow, and the five concluding prose pieces, which portray scenes from the tragical story of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, may serve to interest the pupil in a fascinating period of French history, and will introduce him to that great mass of personal historical material in which French literature abounds. The dramatical selection, somewhat abridged from the original, will give him an early acquaintance with conversational French, and introduce him in a charming way to that realm of literature in which the French are the undisputed masters. The vocabulary contains, besides the selected meanings of the words as used in the text, the translation of common idiomatic expressions found in the book. The notes supplement the vocabulary, and are also designed to help the pupil over the difficult places, to explain historical and literary allusions, and to call attention to some grammatical principles. At the end of the book is an alphabetical table of irregular verbs. It gives the complete synopsis of each verb, together with the inflection of the present subjunctive when it presents any irregularity, and of the present indicative. The irregular verbs in the vocabulary are marked by an abbreviation. BOSTON, August, 1894. GEORGE W. ROLLINS. |