Level B1 · Chapter 62
Three Peasant Girls on the Road
Sancho has to show his master a Dulcinea who does not exist, so he uses the first woman who rides by. Don Quixote sees the truth and cannot believe it.
What you will learn
- Talk about a whole idea with lo bueno, lo peor and lo difícil.
- Use lo que to refer to something without naming it.
- Tell lo mejor from el mejor.
Before you read
This lesson is full of sentences that open with lo: lo más fácil, lo peor, lo que veía. That little word is not an article for a masculine noun and it is not the object pronoun you already know. It is a third lo, and it turns an adjective or a clause into an idea. Collect every one you meet, and notice that none of them refers to a person or an object you could point at.The story in easy Spanish
Sancho tenía que presentarle a su amo una Dulcinea que no existía.
Sancho had to present his master with a Dulcinea who did not exist.
Lo más fácil era mentir, y lo difícil era que la mentira se sostuviera.
The easiest thing was to lie, and the hard part was making the lie hold up.
Estuvo un buen rato sentado, dándole vueltas a lo que iba a decir.
He sat there a good while, turning over what he was going to say.
Entonces vio venir por el camino a tres labradoras montadas en tres burros.
Then he saw three farm women coming along the road on three donkeys.
Aquello era exactamente lo que necesitaba, y no iba a repetirse.
That was exactly what he needed, and it was not going to happen twice.
Corrió hasta donde estaba don Quijote y le dijo que saliera deprisa.
He ran to where Don Quixote was and told him to come out quickly.
Le contó que allí venía la señora Dulcinea con dos de sus damas.
He told him the lady Dulcinea was coming with two of her ladies in waiting.
Aseguró que las tres eran hermosísimas y que brillaban como el sol.
He swore all three were extremely beautiful and shone like the sun.
El caballero salió al camino, se quitó el sombrero y miró con atención.
The knight came out onto the road, took off his hat and looked carefully.
Lo que veía eran tres mujeres del campo sobre tres burros pequeños.
What he saw was three country women on three small donkeys.
Tenían la cara ancha, la nariz chata y las manos de trabajar.
They had broad faces, flat noses and working hands.
«Yo no veo, Sancho, sino a tres labradoras sobre tres borricos», dijo.
"I see nothing, Sancho, but three peasant girls on three donkeys," he said.
Sancho le contestó, muy serio, que lo que tenía delante era una princesa.
Sancho answered him, perfectly straight-faced, that what stood before him was a princess.
Le explicó que lo raro sería verla con su cara verdadera.
He explained that the odd thing would be seeing her with her real face.
Añadió que los encantadores habían cambiado lo hermoso por lo vulgar.
He added that the enchanters had swapped what was lovely for what was coarse.
Don Quijote se arrodilló en el polvo del camino, con los ojos bajos.
Don Quixote knelt down in the dust of the road, with his eyes lowered.
Una de las mujeres le gritó que se apartara de en medio.
One of the women shouted at him to get out of the way.
Soltó una palabrota bien clara y siguió su camino sin entender nada.
She came out with a good clear swear word and rode on without understanding a thing.
El burro dio un salto y la labradora estuvo a punto de caerse.
The donkey jumped and the farm woman very nearly fell off.
Cuando las tres se alejaron, el caballero se quedó callado un rato largo.
When the three of them had moved off, the knight stayed silent a long while.
Lo peor no era el desprecio, aunque el desprecio también dolía.
The worst part was not the snub, though the snub hurt too.
Lo peor era comprender que le habían cambiado a Dulcinea la cara y el olor.
The worst part was realising they had changed Dulcinea’s face and even her smell.
«Lo que más me duele», dijo por fin, «es que no me reconociera».
"What hurts me most," he said at last, "is that she did not know me."
Sancho no dijo lo que sabía, y aquello fue lo más grave de todo.
Sancho did not say what he knew, and that was the most serious thing of all.
Desde ese día, todo lo que le pasó a don Quijote salió de esa mentira.
From that day on, everything that happened to Don Quixote came out of that lie.
Lo que empezó como una salida rápida acabó durando toda la segunda parte.
What began as a quick way out ended up lasting the whole of Part Two.
Vocabulary
Ideas with lo
- lo mejor
- the best part
- lo peor
- the worst part
- lo difícil
- the hard part
- lo raro
- the odd thing
- lo importante
- the important thing
- lo bueno
- the good thing
- lo mismo
- the same thing
- lo de siempre
- the usual
Faces and bodies
- la cara ancha
- the broad face
- la nariz chata
- the flat nose
- hermosísima
- extremely beautiful
- vulgar
- coarse
- brillar
- to shine
- el olor
- the smell
- la labradora
- the farm woman
- la dama
- the lady in waiting
A meeting that goes wrong
- arrodillarse
- to kneel
- apartarse
- to get out of the way
- la palabrota
- the swear word
- el desprecio
- the snub
- doler
- to hurt
- alejarse
- to move away
- el encantador
- the enchanter
- estar a punto de
- to be about to
Lo bueno, lo peor, lo que
Lo más fácil era mentir.
Lo peor era el desprecio.
Lo que veía eran tres mujeres.
There are three different words spelled lo in Spanish. You already know two of them: the object pronoun in lo vi, I saw him, and the one inside lo de siempre. This lesson is about the third, the neuter lo, which has no gender and no plural because it never refers to a thing you could count.
1. Lo plus an adjective
Put lo in front of an adjective and you get an abstract idea, roughly English the … thing or the … part.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Lo bueno es que nadie los vio. | The good thing is that nobody saw them. |
| Lo peor era el desprecio. | The worst part was the snub. |
| Lo difícil es sostener la mentira. | The hard part is keeping the lie up. |
| Lo raro sería verla de verdad. | The odd thing would be really seeing her. |
| Cambiaron lo hermoso por lo vulgar. | They swapped the lovely for the coarse. |
The adjective stays masculine singular however many things you are talking about, because it is not agreeing with anything. Lo importante son los detalles, not los importantes.
2. Lo mejor is not el mejor
This pair is worth ten minutes on its own, because both translate as the best.
| Spanish | English | refers to |
|---|---|---|
| lo mejor del libro | the best thing about the book | an idea, a part |
| el mejor del pueblo | the best man in the village | a person |
| la mejor de las tres | the best of the three women | a person |
3. Lo que
Lo que is the same neuter lo with a relative clause hooked on. It means what in the sense of the thing that, never in the sense of a question.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Lo que veía eran tres mujeres. | What he saw was three women. |
| No dijo lo que sabía. | He did not say what he knew. |
| Todo lo que pasó salió de ahí. | Everything that happened came from there. |
| Lo que más me duele es eso. | What hurts me most is that. |
Two neighbours to keep apart. Lo cual does the same job but refers back to a whole previous sentence and belongs to written Spanish: se arrodilló en el polvo, lo cual sorprendió a todos. And qué with an accent is the question word: ¿qué viste? against no dijo lo que vio.
The windmills, in reverse
Hold this scene next to the windmills for a moment, because Cervantes has built it as an exact mirror. In 1605, Don Quixote looks at mills and sees giants, while Sancho looks at mills and sees mills, and says so. Here, Sancho looks at three farm girls and calls them princesses, knowing perfectly well what they are, and Don Quixote looks at them and sees three farm girls on donkeys, and says so with complete accuracy.
It is the first time in the book that the knight reports the world correctly, and it destroys him. His whole system requires Dulcinea to be a great lady, so if his eyes show him a broad-faced woman who swears at him, then his eyes must have been tampered with. He reaches the only conclusion his logic allows: enchanters have got at her. That the enchantment covers her smell as well as her face is a detail Cervantes cannot resist, and it is the detail that makes the scene hurt rather than simply amuse.
Structurally this lie is the engine of everything that follows. From here to the end of the novel Don Quixote is trying to get Dulcinea disenchanted, and the Duke and Duchess will later build enormous practical jokes on top of that need, including a penance that falls on Sancho himself. The squire has invented a machine that will eventually be turned round and pointed at him, which is a very old joke told extremely well.
Cervantes in the original
Yo no veo, Sancho —dijo don Quijote—, sino a tres labradoras sobre tres borricos.
"I see nothing, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "but three peasant girls on three donkeys."
From II, 10, and one of the most quietly devastating lines in the book. Notice first that it is simply true. Three farm women on three donkeys is an accurate description of what is standing in front of him, and the sentence is built with the plain no… sino pattern, I see nothing but, which allows no wriggle room at all. For once the knight is the reliable witness in the scene, and Sancho is the one manufacturing giants. The reversal of the windmills is deliberate and Cervantes trusts the reader to feel it without being told. What happens next is the interesting part. Faced with a clash between his eyes and his system, Don Quixote does not abandon the system. He concludes that the evidence has been tampered with by enchanters, which is logically impeccable and completely mad, and he then spends the remaining five hundred pages trying to undo the enchantment. The word borrico, incidentally, is the everyday, slightly rough word for a donkey, and choosing it over pollino or asno is part of the flatness of the line.