The Reunion at the Inn

What you will learn

• Give and withdraw orders in the negative, to tú, to usted and to ustedes.
• Address somebody as usted without slipping into tú halfway through.
• Put the pronouns before or after the verb, whichever the sentence requires.

Before you read

The story in easy Spanish

A la mañana siguiente llegaron a la venta cuatro hombres a caballo.

The next morning four men on horseback arrived at the inn.

Con ellos venía una mujer tapada con un velo negro.

With them came a woman covered by a black veil.

Nadie sabía quiénes eran, y ellos no dijeron sus nombres.

Nobody knew who they were, and they gave no names.

En cuanto Cardenio oyó hablar a la mujer, se puso pálido y tuvo que sentarse en el suelo.

The moment Cardenio heard the woman speak, he turned pale and had to sit down on the ground.

Dorotea oyó al hombre que la acompañaba y se apoyó en la pared.

Dorotea heard the man with her and leaned against the wall.

Eran Luscinda y don Fernando, que venían de lejos, y ella era la mujer que Cardenio amaba desde niño.

They were Luscinda and Don Fernando, who had come a long way, and she was the woman Cardenio had loved since he was a boy.

Don Fernando era el hombre que había prometido casarse con Dorotea.

Don Fernando was the man who had promised to marry Dorotea.

Dorotea se echó a sus pies y no lo dejó escapar.

Dorotea threw herself at his feet and did not let him get away.

Don Fernando quiso huir hacia la puerta, pero ella lo sujetaba.

Don Fernando tried to flee towards the door, but she held on to him.

«No se vaya usted», dijo desde el suelo, «y no me niegue lo que me prometió hace un año.»

"Do not go," she said from the ground, "and do not deny me what you promised me a year ago."

«Y no haga infeliz a otra mujer por no cumplir su palabra.»

"And do not make another woman unhappy rather than keep your word."

«Suélteme usted», contestó él al principio, muy nervioso.

"Let go of me," he answered at first, very agitated.

«No me toque, no me hable delante de esta gente.»

"Do not touch me, do not speak to me in front of these people."

Luscinda se levantó el velo y habló también, muy tranquila.

Luscinda lifted her veil and spoke too, perfectly calm.

Dijo que no era esposa de don Fernando y que nunca lo había sido.

She said she was not Don Fernando’s wife and never had been.

«No me busque más y no se enfade conmigo, porque nunca he mentido», le pidió con voz muy clara.

"Do not look for me again, and do not be angry with me, because I have never lied," she asked him in a very clear voice.

«No me marcharé de aquí sin Cardenio», añadió al final.

"I shall not leave this place without Cardenio," she added at the end.

Don Fernando estuvo callado un rato muy largo, mirando al suelo, mientras todos esperaban en el patio.

Don Fernando was silent for a very long while, looking at the ground, while everyone waited in the courtyard.

Después soltó a Luscinda y tomó de la mano a Dorotea.

Then he let Luscinda go and took Dorotea by the hand.

«No lloren ustedes más», dijo en voz baja, «y no me pidan nada más, porque ya está todo dicho.»

"Do not cry any more," he said quietly, "and do not ask me for anything else, because it is all said now."

Don Quijote miraba la escena desde la puerta y no entendía nada.

Don Quixote watched the scene from the doorway and understood nothing.

Para él, aquello era el séquito de la princesa Micomicona, y su gente discutía asuntos del reino.

To him, that was simply the Princess Micomicona’s retinue, and her people were arguing over the affairs of her kingdom.

Nadie le explicó nada, y él no preguntó nunca.

Nobody explained anything to him, and he never asked.

Vocabulary

The courtyard of the inn

el patio

the courtyard

el velo

the veil

el séquito

the retinue

a caballo

on horseback

la escena

the scene

el rato

the while

apoyarse

to lean

What is felt without being said

pálido

pale

callado

silent

infeliz

unhappy

nervioso

agitated, nervous

enfadarse

to get angry

mentir

to lie

cumplir la palabra

to keep one’s word

Holding on and letting go

sujetar

to hold on to

soltar

to let go of

escapar

to escape

huir

to flee

echarse a los pies

to throw oneself at somebody’s feet

tomar de la mano

to take by the hand

reconocer

to recognise

Negative orders, and addressing somebody as usted

No se vaya usted.

No me hable delante de esta gente.

No lloren ustedes más.

Four lessons of subjunctive have quietly built you an imperative. This lesson simply shows you what you already own.

1. Every negative command is a subjunctive

There are no exceptions and no irregular forms to learn. To tell somebody not to do something, take the present subjunctive of the person you are talking to and put no in front of it.

Look down that table and notice what it tells you. Only one cell in the whole grid is not a subjunctive: the affirmative tú, the habla and ven and haz you learned in lesson 13. Everything else, affirmative or negative, is the mood of this block. The irregular tú commands are the loudest example: ven and haz and di and pon look nothing like their negatives, which are no vengas, no hagas, no digas, no pongas.

2. The pronouns move

This is where English speakers lose sentences. In an affirmative command the pronouns are welded onto the end of the verb and an accent usually appears to keep the stress where it was. In a negative command they jump in front and stand as separate words.

The order of the pronouns themselves never changes. Indirect before direct, exactly as in lesson 38: dígamelo and no me lo diga keep me in front of lo in both.

3. Usted, and holding it

Lesson 41 taught you to keep usted going through a letter. Here it has to survive a conversation, which is harder, because the pressure of feeling pushes people towards tú. Dorotea is on the ground begging a man who ruined her life, and she never once slips. Every marker is in place.

Note the last row, because it is a real difference between Spain and Latin America. In Spain vosotros is the everyday plural and ustedes is formal. In Latin America vosotros has disappeared and ustedes covers both, formal and friendly alike. A Spaniard telling friends not to cry says no lloréis. A Mexican says no lloren, to friends and to strangers.

4. Softening an order

A bare negative command can sound harsh, and Spanish has ready made cushions for it. No se preocupe is fine on its own, but por favor, no se preocupe, haga el favor de no salir, or the conditional you learned in lesson 33, ¿podría no hacer eso?, all move it down a register. Don Fernando, who is losing the argument, drops his volume instead and says no lloren ustedes más very quietly. Same grammar, different man.

From vuestra merced to usted

Nobody in this scene actually said usted, because in 1605 the word did not exist yet. What they said was vuestra merced, your grace, and the history of how that turned into usted is one of the neatest things in Spanish. A phrase used ten thousand times a day wears down: vuestra merced gave vuesa merced, then vuesarced, then vusted, and finally the usted of today. Cervantes writes several of the intermediate stages, and he uses them to mark class, because a carter clipped the phrase and a gentleman did not.

That history explains the grammar. Usted takes third person verb forms, which strikes every learner as illogical, and the reason is that you were never grammatically addressing the person at all. You were addressing their grace, an abstract quality, which is a third party present in the room. English did the identical thing with your majesty is too kind and never generalised it. Spanish generalised it to everyone.

There was a third pronoun in play as well. Vos sat between tú and vuestra merced and was used to inferiors or between equals, which meant it kept sliding down the scale until it became almost insulting in Spain and died out there. In much of Latin America, and especially in Argentina, Uruguay and Central America, it did the opposite: it displaced tú entirely and is now the ordinary friendly form. Two continents took the same pronoun in opposite directions.

This lesson modernises the dialogue to plain usted, because that is the register you will need at a hotel desk in Seville next year. But when you read Cervantes in the original, watch the forms of address. He tells you the whole social position of a character before that character has said anything at all.

Cervantes in the original

Levantaos, señora mía, que no es justo que esté arrodillada a mis pies la que yo tengo en mi alma

Rise, my lady, for it is not right that the woman I hold in my soul should be kneeling at my feet.

Two grammar points and a whole social world in twenty words. The command levantaos is the imperative of vos, the middle pronoun described in the culture note, and today it would be levántese to a stranger or levántate to an intimate. The speaker is using the form that is respectful without being distant, which is precisely the relationship he is trying to establish in the sentence. Then, immediately after it, comes the structure of the last four lessons: no es justo que esté arrodillada. A negated impersonal expression, and the verb after que goes into the subjunctive, exactly as no es verdad que haya entrado nadie did in lesson 46. Four hundred years and the rule has not shifted a millimetre. Two smaller pleasures. La que yo tengo en mi alma is a relative clause with no noun in front of it, something Spanish does easily and English cannot without adding a word: the one whom, the woman whom. And the word order postpones that phrase to the very end of the sentence, so the listener does not learn who is kneeling until the last three words. Cervantes puts the emotional payload where it will land hardest, which is a thing he does so often that you stop calling it a coincidence.