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  1. Hello, Carlos,
    I just came back from my holiday and I’m glad you added a new French text.
    I will read it with the attention it deserves shortly.
    Thank you. 🙂

  2. Well, I read the whole story… and I don’t think I would ever be cheeky enough to try that “stunt”.

    So I have few remarks and few things I didn’t understand…

    Page 1 – first column:
    — “en fouillant dans leurs poches”: I would have added the little stroke for “ill” like in “brillants” (Études Graduées… p. 90 n°136) or “bienveillant (E.G. p. 101 n°150). Without it, it looks quite like “fuyant”…

    Page 1 – second column:
    – “en conséquence l’un deux entre dans un…”. The verb “entrer” is full written contrary to “rentrer” (E.G. “entrais” and “entrera” p.99 n°147);
    — “s’adressant au propriétaire”: brief form (E.G. p.170 n°190);
    – “donner un bon dîner”: “dîner” has been repeated many times with the “DEN” stroke. I’m sorry to say it’s “D-E-N” (E.G p.119 n°168);
    — “dit mon hôte charmé d’héberger un étranger à mon distingué” ?: the meaning escapes me…

    Page 2 – first column:
    nothing.

    Page 2 – second column:
    – second line: “l’Américain sort triomphant”. You must have forgotten the little stroke at the end of “l’Amérique”.
    — “et flairant une vengeance il répond ??? ??? ???”: that one escaped me too…
    – bottom of the column “celui-ci rit(?)”: I don’t understand why there are two circles, “rire” is just “r” (Sténographie Gregg p.8 n°22), “rit” is just “R-E”, so “riait” ? But none of the other verbs use that tense…

    Page 3 – first column:
    nothing.

    Page 3 – second column:
    – top of the column: “L’hôtelier ahuri de ce ??? inattendu”: I don’t see this word…

    And that’s all… 🙂

    I still doubt that nowadays policemen are so fond of semantics…

    1. Thanks for proofreading! I made the corrections to fouillant (in Simplified is written like you said), dîner (I wrote it the Simplified way), propriétaire, entre, and l’Americain. Here are your other doubts:

      1. Page 1 second column: … à mine distingué … (I corrected mine, since I wrote it with the blend as in Simplified).
      2. Page 2 second column: … et, flairant une vengeance, il répond, les dents serrées et avec un mauvais sourire …. Also, the verb tense of rire is the imparfait: riait.
      3. Page 3 second column: L’hôtelier, ahuri de ce dénouement inattendu …

      I wonder if an incident like this could still happen in a small village in the middle of the countryside …

      1. As usual, it’s the unusual forms that are the most problematic… combined to an unusual phrasing.

        I didn’t understand: you didn’t change “mine” (Page 1 – second column). It’s one of those forms that are present in the Sénécal manual: p.7 n°17.

        Thanks for the clarifications… 🙂

  3. Hello Carlos and Christine,
    Thanks Carlos, I tackled the simplified text, and that was really fun to read! It took me a good 5 minutes to figure out the outline that reads ’dîner’, but surprisingly I found the rest easier to decipher than I would have imagined, for a simplified text.
    A few things I didn’t get though:
    Ils étaient X presque à sec. This seems to be the same outline as dîner but without the ’E’… din, dain, tin, tain… no idea.
    Un jour qu’il se trouvait à X [I would guess Asnières, but the S is normally silent so I’m not sure]?
    Is there maybe a missing “ils” in “Après s’être consultés, [ils] arrêtèrent leur plan”?
    Et s’adressant au propriétaire X [rumine?]
    Throughout the text I see M-R which I take to mean ’Monsieur’ but isn’t this the English form? or maybe that’s a simplified thing… but it’s strange to use the R stroke in a word where it is silent. In DJS it’s just a lone M as far as I remember.
    “Le quart d’heure de Rabelais” = I had to look that up! I had never heard that expression in French before, je mourrai moins bête. I’m quite happy though that I was able to read something I didn’t even know in French, with a name in it at that 🙂
    A question regarding “d’ailleurs”. In DJS I would have written it the same way that you wrote “fouillant”. Is it specific to simplified (same question for ’assaillant’)?
    [Mon] hôte n’a pas de doute que c’est encore un escroc: is it really “mon”? In which case I find it a bit funny in the French text.

    Otherwise the rest is obviously crystal-clear and I hope one day I can right half as legibly as you!

    By the way, how come you never wrote anything in French DJS? Your audience is quite limited (to me?) but you know it is here 🙂

    1. Welcome back, Aymeric, and thanks for the feedback!

      1. That den blend (eliminated in French DJS) in this case is the brief form donc: Ils étaient donc presque à sec …. In DJS, donc is written in full.
      2. About Asnières, I had no idea how to pronounce the name and I didn’t check, but it’s corrected now in both versions.
      3. Indeed, ils was missing, but I added it.
      4. … et s’adressant au propriétaire lui-même: I now made the l a little longer.
      5. m-r is monsieur to keep it the same as in English.
      6. le quart d’heure de Rabelais is really an interesting phrase, and I’ve never heard it before.
      7. The broken circle in Anniversary and Simplified already has the j sound, so you don’t need to write it.
      8. Yes, it’s mon hôte.

      I had not written in French before because I had not studied the French Gregg series well enough to be able to do so comfortably.

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