The Knight in the Green Coat

What you will learn

• Describe somebody’s character: what they are like and how they are.
• Use the adjectives that change meaning with ser and with estar.
• Say what you make of a person without passing final judgement.

Before you read

The story in easy Spanish

Por el camino de Zaragoza se encontraron con un hombre en una yegua tordilla.

On the road to Zaragoza they met a man riding a dapple-grey mare.

Llevaba un gabán de paño verde y todo en él parecía limpio y ordenado.

He wore a coat of green cloth and everything about him looked clean and tidy.

Se llamaba don Diego de Miranda y era un hidalgo rico de aquella comarca.

His name was Don Diego de Miranda and he was a wealthy gentleman of that district.

Estaba casado y tenía un hijo estudiante que escribía versos en vez de leyes.

He was married and had a student son who wrote verse instead of law.

Contó su vida sin presumir de nada, con la voz tranquila de quien está contento.

He told them his life without showing off, in the calm voice of a contented man.

Cazaba de vez en cuando, comía con sus vecinos y daba algo a los pobres.

He hunted now and then, ate with his neighbours and gave something to the poor.

Tenía unos setenta libros, unos en castellano y otros en latín.

He owned about seventy books, some in Spanish and some in Latin.

Ninguno era de caballerías, aunque él no lo dijo en voz alta.

Not one was a book of chivalry, though he did not say so out loud.

«No soy santo», dijo, «pero estoy contento con la vida que llevo».

"I am no saint," he said, "but I am content with the life I lead."

«Vivo tranquilo, y eso ya es bastante para un hombre de mi edad».

"I live quietly, and that is quite enough for a man of my age."

Don Diego iba mirando a don Quijote con una curiosidad que no disimulaba.

Don Diego kept looking at Don Quixote with a curiosity he did not hide.

Aquel hombre era flaco, amarillo y larguísimo, y estaba armado de arriba abajo.

The man was thin, sallow and extremely tall, and he was armed from head to foot.

Iba vestido como los caballeros de hace doscientos años, con lanza y escudo.

He was dressed like the knights of two hundred years earlier, with lance and shield.

Pero cuando hablaba, era discreto, era inteligente y estaba muy seguro de sí.

But when he spoke he was thoughtful, he was intelligent and he was very sure of himself.

Decía cosas sensatas sobre la poesía y sobre la educación de los hijos.

He said sensible things about poetry and about bringing up children.

De pronto decía otras completamente locas, sin cambiar de tono ni de cara.

Then suddenly he said others that were completely mad, without changing tone or face.

«Está cuerdo y está loco a la vez», pensó el hidalgo del gabán.

"He is sane and mad at the same time," thought the gentleman in the coat.

«Es la persona más rara que he conocido en todos mis años».

"He is the strangest person I have met in all my years."

«No sé si reírme de él o quitarme el sombrero delante suyo».

"I do not know whether to laugh at him or take my hat off to him."

Sancho, mientras tanto, se acercó a don Diego y le besó la mano.

Sancho, meanwhile, went up to Don Diego and kissed his hand.

Le dijo en voz baja que su amo era el hombre más bueno del mundo.

He told him quietly that his master was the best man in the world.

Añadió que estaba loco, sí, pero que nunca había hecho daño a nadie.

He added that he was mad, yes, but had never done harm to anybody.

«Es tonto por fuera y sabio por dentro», dijo el escudero muy convencido.

"He is a fool outside and wise inside," said the squire with great conviction.

Don Diego escuchó todo aquello y no supo qué contestarle a Sancho.

Don Diego listened to all that and did not know what to answer Sancho.

Los invitó a su casa para que descansaran unos días con su familia.

He invited them to his house so they could rest a few days with his family.

Aceptaron, y aquella tarde los tres caminaron juntos sin hablar de gigantes.

They accepted, and that afternoon the three rode on together without mentioning giants.

Vocabulary

What a person is like

sensato

level-headed

discreto

discreet

ordenado

tidy

generoso

generous

callado

quiet by nature

orgulloso

proud

cuerdo

sane

raro

odd

How a person is today

estar contento

to be content

estar tranquilo

to be calm

estar seguro

to be sure

estar cansado

to be tired

estar convencido

to be convinced

estar armado

to be armed

estar casado

to be married

estar loco

to be out of your mind

The gentleman on the road

la yegua

the mare

el gabán

the long coat

el paño

the cloth

la comarca

the district

presumir

to show off

disimular

to hide what you feel

hacer daño

to do harm

quitarse el sombrero

to take off your hat

Ser and estar for describing a person

Don Diego es un hidalgo tranquilo.

Don Diego está contento con su vida.

Don Quijote está cuerdo y está loco a la vez.

The first rule you learnt was that ser is permanent and estar is temporary. It is a useful lie and it starts to leak around this level. A better formulation for describing people: ser says what somebody is, estar says how they are found.

1. Character against condition

2. Adjectives that swap meaning outright

These are not shades of the same idea. The two versions mean different things and cannot be substituted.

Es aburrido and está aburrido is the pair worth memorising first, because getting it backwards at a party is memorable for everyone.

3. The ones that break the permanence rule

Some states last for life and still take estar, which is the clearest evidence that the permanent-temporary story is not the real rule.

The last one earns its place in this lesson. Ser loco is possible but rare and means something like being a wild character. The ordinary way to say that somebody has lost his reason is estar loco, a condition he arrived at, which is exactly the judgement everyone in the novel keeps making about Don Quixote and exactly why they keep expecting him to come back.

The novel’s ordinary man

Don Diego is the only major character in the book who is entirely sane, entirely comfortable and entirely satisfied. He has land, a wife, a son, seventy-odd books, a mare, a green coat and no ambition whatsoever. He hunts a little, gives to the poor, avoids gossip, and describes his own life in a short speech with no boasting in it. He is, by the standards of his century and ours, a completely successful man.

Cervantes then rides him alongside a starving lunatic in rusted armour for two hundred pages and declines to tell us which one to admire. The comparison is not neutral. Don Diego’s life is genuinely good and genuinely small. Don Quixote’s is absurd, painful, humiliating and aimed at something. When the lions arrive in the next lesson, it is Don Diego who tells him not to be a fool and Don Quixote who walks up to the cage, and both of them are right.

Readers have argued about him for four centuries. Some see a portrait of the sensible Christian gentleman, offered as a corrective. Others read the whole green-coated figure as a quiet joke about a man whose life contains no risk of any kind. Cervantes gives no verdict, and the refusal is the point. Note only what his library contains, since a man is his books in this novel: history and devotion, in Spanish and in Latin, and not a single romance of chivalry.

Cervantes in the original

Tengo hasta seis docenas de libros, cuáles de romance y cuáles de latín, de historia algunos y de devoción otros

I have some six dozen books, some in Spanish and some in Latin, some of history and others of devotion

From II, 16, and it is the whole portrait of Don Diego in one sentence. A man in this novel is what he reads, and the reader has been trained to expect a library inventory ever since the priest and the barber burned Don Quixote’s books in Part One. Six dozen is seventy-two, a serious collection for a country gentleman when a printed book cost real money. Romance here does not mean a love story: it means the Spanish vernacular as opposed to Latin, and the contrast Don Diego draws is the ordinary educated one of the period. History and devotion is a solid, respectable, faintly dull spread. The sentence that follows in the original is the one that matters most, and it is the reason this line is quoted: books of chivalry, he says, have not yet crossed the threshold of his doors. He is talking to a man who sold farmland to buy them. Cervantes lets the two libraries face each other across the road and says nothing at all about which is the better one.