Il maigrit, sa taille s’allongea, et sa figure prit une sorte d’expression dolente qui la rendit presque intéressante. (He lost weight, his frame grew taller, and his face took on a sort of sorrowful expression that made him almost interesting.)
There are a couple of new words fun to learn and likely unusable for me.
Maigrir is to lose weight, go slim. If I were to speak, I’d probably use “perdre du poids” instead.
Allonger is also to lay down, just like coucher. The key difference I denote is while coucher is about going to bed to sleep, allonger is about laying down in general, for taking rest, or even stretching out in general without laying down. So “to stretch out” is what it means here.
Rendre again! A couple of notes ago I pointed out the differences between faire / rendre / donner, what a good repetition.
Very important is the use of figure over here. This is a false friend which initially made me think of body, not face. Instead, to talk about a human body, I would say silhouette. But then, there is visage, how is different? I guess, la figure is about something innate about a person that you can read from their face, like “Le prêtre avait la figure gentil” (the priest had a kind face), and le visage is about current expression, like in Hamlet actually: “’Tis not alone […] the dejected haviour of the visage […] that can denote me truly.”. He is mourning about his father’s death, so the dejected expression is supposed to be temporary, reactive to the circumstances. (But wait, english and french words can be different even if they look identical). Yes! But here I don’t care! Looks solid to me!
Dolente is archaic triste, and I remember it from briefly looking up latin on Stabat Mater:“Cuius ánimam geméntem, contristántem et doléntem pertransívit gládius.” (Whose moaning soul, depressed and grieving, the sword has passed through.) This gives me enough context to understand the emotion and gladly never use it in my speech.
Naturellement, par nonchalance ; il en vint à se délier de toutes les résolutions qu’il s’était faites. (Naturally, out of carelessness, he ended up breaking all the resolutions he had made.)
Nonchalance is a stem that exists in modern English. And I did not actually know what it means! Good, I improved my English a bit.
“En venir à” is something like “to end up”, but it’s super formal and rather bookish, so I don’t have to use it. Hopefully I remember it! Maybe books are full of it.
Délier is “to break free” - Je rêve de me délier du français. (I dream of breaking free from French)
Une fois, il manqua la visite, le lendemain son cours, et, savourant la paresse, peu à peu, n’y retourna plus. (Once, he missed the tour; the next day, he missed his class; and, savoring the idleness, little by little, he stopped going back altogether.)
I am happy! Big sentences now require little looking up, which could mean I am improving for passive reading!
“Le lendemain” is “next day” - je vais retourner ton portable le lendemain.
“La paresse” is the best word ever, this is literally me and I embrace it. - je suis trop paresseux.