A Cartomante
The Fortune-Teller
by Machado de Assis
Rita trusts a fortune teller, while Camilo laughs at her belief.
- Authentic text: the opening of a public-domain original
- Word-by-word glosses and translation in English or Chinese, free
- Tap a word for its meaning, listen to the sentence, save words
- Reads in any phone or desktop browser, nothing to download
Sample: three-line reading
Each word has its meaning in this sentence underneath, and each sentence has a full translation. Read the original and glance down only when you need to.
About the book
"A Cartomante" is a short story by the Brazilian writer Machado de Assis, first published in the Gazeta de Notícias of Rio de Janeiro on November 28, 1884, and later included in the 1896 collection Várias Histórias. It centers on Rita, who believes the cartomancer has seen through her secret, and Camillo, who only laughs. The story turns on the tension between credulity and skepticism, with a few lines of dialogue opening onto an uneasy relationship.
About the author
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) was a Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer, widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature, and in 1897 he founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters, serving as its first president. His best-known works include Dom Casmurro, Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas and Quincas Borba.
Summary prepared with AI from Wikipedia: A Cartomante (CC BY-SA)
How the glosses are made
Word glosses and sentence translations are generated in context by AI models (DeepSeek and Zhipu GLM), and every word is checked to have a gloss. AI can make mistakes; you can report problems from the book page.
FAQ
Is this the original text?
Yes. The library holds the opening section of the public-domain original, taken from Wikisource.
Do I need to pay or sign up?
Library books are free to read without an account. Other gloss languages and importing your own texts need an account and credits.
What level is it?
This one is marked “Advanced”. Every word is glossed, so you can keep reading even with a small vocabulary.
Can I use another gloss language?
English and Chinese glosses are prepared in advance; signed-in readers can generate other languages.