Read four short stories by Eça de Queirós — the greatest Portuguese novelist of the nineteenth century — in the original Portuguese beside a clear English translation, one sentence at a time. A treasure three brothers find in the woods and cannot survive; Friar Genebro and his terrible literal-mindedness; a nurse who makes an unbearable choice between two infants; and the gentle miracle of a poor man's supper.

Every sentence is aligned Portuguese-to-English, so you always know exactly what you are reading. Tap any word for an instant definition, listen to natural audio in both languages, and follow the highlighted word alignment as the story is read aloud.

These are Eça at his most compressed — parables and fables rather than the long social novels — so each runs to a few pages and turns on a single hard idea. The spelling is pre-1911 Portuguese, which is how the classics are printed.

This reader is part of a growing collection of bilingual story apps that pair great writing with modern language-learning tools.