Hernani - 11

  Ferdinand in 1492.
  62: Mahom, an abbreviation of Mahomet; compare the English Mahound.
  63: Mais qu'à cela ne tienne. «Why! do not let that hinder you.»
  64: Don Silvius. Like the Italians, and indeed with just as good
  reason, many great Spanish families are fond of claiming descent from
  the heroes of ancient Rome.
  65: Toro. A city of 9000 inhabitants between Valladolid and Zamora.
  66: Valladolid. A famous city in the former kingdom of Leon, in the
  northwest of Spain, famous for its situation, its antiquity, its
  memories. Columbus died there, in 1506.
  67: Tribut des cent vierges. The reference is to a story told in the
  _Romancero general_, to the effect that a hundred virgins were offered
  to the Moors as ransom for a prisoner.
  68: Ramire. There were several kings by the name of Ramiro in the
  history of Aragon.
  69: Grand maître de Saint Jacque et de Calatrava. The orders of
  knighthood of St. James (Santiago) and of Calatrava were founded for
  the purpose of resisting the Moors.
  70: Motril. A town on the Mediterranean, south of Granada and east of
  Malaga.
  71: Antequera. A town of 20,000 inhabitants in Andalusia, between
  Ronda and Granada.
  72: Suez. The editor can find no place of this name on the map
  of Spain. Perry suggests that the author may mean Sueca, south of
  Valencia.
  73: Nijar. A small town near the Mediterranean coast, a few miles
  from Almeria.
  74: tient à Silva, «has something to do with the house of Silva», «is
  affected by us».
  75: Sandoval, Manrique, Lara, Alencastre. Names of great families.
  76: Zamet, Arabic Achmed. The present editor (and every other
  apparently) is ignorant of any Zamet in legend or history to whom this
  could refer.
  77: Car vous me la paîriez. «Because you would pay me a price for it,
  would you not?» Don Ruy is continuing his own sentence, and alludes to
  the head of Hernani.
  78: nôtre, instead of _à nous_.
  79: grand merci! The English «grammercy» is supposed to come from
  this expression, though it has also been said to be a corruption of
  «God have mercy!» Translate here: «Many thanks!» ironically.
  80: The Duke of Alcala does not figure in the list of _dramatis
  personae_, nor does he have a word to utter in the whole play.
  81: que vite, «how quickly».
  82: mon infante, «my princess».
  83: malgré mes voeux, «against my will».
  84: contente, imperative.
  85: te laisseras-tu faire? «will you yield to me?»
  86: see note 56, act IV.
  
  
  ACT IV.
  
  1: Aix la-Chapelle (Aachen) was the old Frankish capital. Charlemagne
  held court there and at Engilenheim. He was buried there, A.D. 814,
  in «that basilica which it had been the delight of his later years to
  erect and adorn with the treasures of ancient art. His tomb under
  the dome--where now we see an enormous slab, with the words 'Carolo
  Magno'--was inscribed _Magnus atque Orthodoxus Imperator_». (Bryce:
  «Holy Roman Empire».) Mr. Bryce adds: «This basilica was built upon
  the model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and as
  it was the first church of any size that had been erected in those
  regions for centuries past, it excited extraordinary interest among
  the Franks and Gauls. In many of its features it greatly resembles
  the beautiful church of San Vitale, at Ravenna... Over the tomb of
  Charles, below the central dome... there hangs a huge chandelier, the
  gift of Frederick Barbarossa.»
  2: Monsieur l'électeur de Trèves. The Archbishop of Trier stood out
  for a long time in favor of Francis I.
  3: Où Rodolphe extermina Lothaire. The allusion is not clear.
  4: Gotha, the Duke of Gotha, heading the list of nobles opposed to
  the election of Charles.
  5: croi, instead of _crois_, for the sake of the rhyme with _moi_. It
  must be remembered that French rhymes are made for the eye, sometimes,
  more than for the ear.
  6: Lutzelbourg, the duchy of Luxembourg, sometimes, with the city of
  that name, called (in German) Lützelburg.
  7: est trop grand de la tête, «is a head too tall», _i.e._, will be
  decapitated before he has done.
  8: Astorga, a town in the kingdom of Leon, in northwestern Spain.
  9: Ont toujours fait doubler la solde du bourreau, probably means
  that so many of them have been executed, and such large game too, that
  their deaths have enriched the executioner.
  10: deux hardis compagnons, «two bold fellows».
  11: l'élargir, refers to _drap_ in the next line.
  12: Un Saxon hérétique. Frederick, Elector of Saxony, was born in
  1463. He was a generous patron of learning, founded in 1502 the
  University of Wittenberg, and lent his powerful protection to Luther,
  though he never publicly declared himself a Protestant. His declining
  the imperial crown on this occasion, in 1519, has been already
  mentioned. He died in 1525.
  13: Des princes de Hesse. This is a mistake, if Hugo means that a
  prince of Hesse was one of the electors, as there were none of that
  house until 1803, when Landgrave William IX of Hesse-Cassel became
  Elector with the title William I.
  14: Dans ma peau de lion emporter comme Hercule. Hugo probably
  alludes here to the story of Hercules and the Cercopes, two
  mischievous gnomes who annoyed Hercules in his sleep and were captured
  by him and given to Omphale. Baumeister (Denkmäler des klassischen
  Alterthums, Vol. 1. p. 664) thinks that these impish creatures may
  have been monkeys. I can find no statement that Hercules carried them
  off in his lion's skin, but he is said to have strung them by their
  feet to a pole.
  15: Triboulet, a deformed court jester of King Francis I of France,
  and the grotesque hero of Hugo's play «Le Roi s'amuse». Translate:
  «would be a head shorter than Triboulet himself».
  16: Gand, Tolède, Salamanque, Ghent, Toledo, Salamanca.
  17: For cacophony this line would be hard to beat. It sounds like
  the croaking of frogs; and there is no reason apparent why the author
  should indulge in such a hideous eccentricity.
  18: sauf, plus tard, à les reprendre, «with the mental reservation
  that I _might_ take them back».
  19: Vous vous couvrez? The wily Ricardo, hearing the king address him
  familiarly with _tu_ (l. 17), which was the form of address from the
  kings of Spain to grandees, whom they also called «cousin», puts on
  his hat in the king's presence--another privilege of a grandee.
  20: Baste, «enough», from the Italian _basta_.
  21: Peut-être on voudra d'un César. «Perhaps she will put up with an
  emperor.»
  22: Ce Corneille Agrippa pourtant en sait bien long! «And yet this
  Cornelius Agrippa has great insight!» Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
  von Nettesheim, born 1486 at Cologne, died 1535 at Grenoble, was
  a celebrated scholar, who filled various offices, of more or less
  doubtful character, under the Emperor Maximilian I. and Francis I. He
  wrote a satire «De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum», and a work
  against witchcraft, «De occulta philosophia», but had the reputation
  of being a magician himself.
  23: l'abbé Jean Trithème. Johannes Tritheim, born in 1462 at
  Trittenheim, near Trier, was a Benedictine monk, who became abbot of
  St. James in Würzburg, where he died in 1516. He wrote a number of
  semi-historical works, and had a reputation for supernatural wisdom.
  24: comte de Limburg. Limburg was a duchy, west of Aachen, now
  divided between Belgium and the Netherlands.
  25: gardien capitulaire, guardian of the tomb of Charlemagne, by
  appointment of the monastic chapter which had it in charge.
  26: SCENE II. This is one of the most powerful passages in Victor
  Hugo's writings. It would be hard to say to what extent the sentiments
  here expressed were his personally. At any rate, it is a grandiloquent
  exposition of the imperial idea. As Mr. H.A. Perry remarks, the poet
  is evidently thinking, and with intense sympathy, of the aspirations
  of Napoleon I. and his ambition to subject the Pope to himself. It
  is in this scene that Charles is represented as changing from a
  headstrong, frivolous, undisciplined libertine into a grave man made
  noble by a sense of responsibility. It may be questioned whether so
  sudden a transformation is possible, and certain it is that in the
  play the Charles of the preceding part is not the same man as he who
  emerges from the tomb of Charlemagne. It is improbable that the mere
  heightening of a weak, bad man's ambition would make him good and
  great in half an hour. But such contrasts are Hugo's delight.
  27: un monde créateur, meaning the Middle Ages, as an epoch fertile
  in great institutions.
  28: le hasard corrige le hasard, means that whatever the oppression
  of the time, it is probable that the people will have a friend either
  in the Pope or the Emperor, and if one is tyrannical the other may be
  clement.
  29: toujours l'ordre éclate, «order still springs forth».
  30: Qu'une idée, au besoin des temps, un jour élose. «Let but a
  thought, in the fulness of time, some day burst forth.»
  31: Se fait homme, «becomes incarnate».
  32: These lines are packed with meaning, the principal idea being
  that the will of the people and the will of God will from time to time
  find personification in an elective Pope or an elective Emperor, and
  triumph over hereditary sovereigns and time-honored prerogatives.
  33: diète is the legislative assembly of the Empire, conclave the
  assembly of cardinals to elect a Pope.
  34: suaire, lit. «shroud»; but it is difficult to see why Hugo
  chose this word for the papal mantle, unless helped there-to by the
  necessity of finding a rhyme for _sanctuaire_.
  35: Pierre et César, en eux accouplant les deux Romes, the idea so
  much insisted on by Dante in the De Monarchia and the Divine Comedy,
  that the spiritual Rome of Peter's founding and the temporal Roman
  Empire of Caesar's creation were divinely sanctioned, and necessary to
  each other.
  36: à larges pans, «on a generous scale».
  37: la clef de voûte, «the keystone».
  38: ducs à fleurons, «dukes with flowered escutcheons.»
  39: nous arrive fanfare, «comes to us like trumpet-blast.»
  40: What follows, the vision of the People, is very characteristic of
  Hugo, however unlike anything that Charles would have thought, and it
  is nobly expressed.
  41: l'étreignant. The antecedent of the _l'_ is _pyramide_.
  42: sur ses hautes zones. The antecedent of _ses_ is _pyramide_.
  43: des empires, the object of _verrait_.
  44: son flux. The antecedent of _son_ is _flot_, in line 25.
  45: The antecedent of _le_ and _il_ is _flot_ again.
  46: Il n'aille pas me prendre, impersonal, «There came not over me a
  giddiness.»
  47: seulement, «even».
  48: dût en parlant, «even if in speaking».
  49: dusses-tu me dire, see preface.
  50: Qui vive? «Who goes there?»
  51: étranger par sa mère, «a foreigner on his mother's side», the
  Spanish side. See note 59, act I.
  52: meure comme un Hébreu, a testimony to the constancy of the Jews
  under persecution.
  53: roue et tenailles mordantes, «the wheel (of torture) and the
  biting (red-hot) pincers.»
  54: chevalets, «wooden horses»: trestles with a sharp ridge, upon
  which victims were set astride for torture.
  55: lampes ardentes, «fires», applied with careful ingenuity to the
  feet, generally.
  56: Je te rends ce cor, see note 86, act III.
  57: Avec Dieu dans ceci je suis d'intelligence, «God is on my side in
  this.»
  58: dès ce soir, simply, «this evening».
  59: le traître, meaning Charles, whom he considers the real traitor.
  60: S'il périt, means Hernani.
  61: sans nous y soustraire, «without ever giving up», «without
  defection».
  62: Jurons sur cette croix. His sword, like a crusader's, had a guard
  at right angles to the hilt, thus forming across.
  63: Connétable d'Espagne, by thus naming him the Emperor appoints
  Alcala to this high office, and then in the same manner gives Almuñan
  the Admiralty of Castile, a position of great honor.
  64: Majesté! The sycophant Ricardo is the first to proffer the new
  title, which was supposed to belong to emperors alone. Charles,
  however, is said to have caused it to be employed towards himself
  while yet only King of Spain.
  65: Alcade du palais. «Governor of the palace.»
  66: Deux électeurs. This is not correct. The news of his election was
  brought from Frankfort to Charles at Barcelona by the Count Palatine.
  The Duke of Bavaria was not at that time an elector.
  67: chambre dorée. The election took place in the splendid hall of a
  building in Frankfort known as the Römer.
  68: roi des Romains. One of the concomitant titles of the Emperor was
  King of the Romans. When an Emperor was so fortunate as to be crowned
  at Rome he assumed the clamys and sandals of a Roman patrician, and
  great sanctity was attached to this dignity as perpetuating the line
  of the ancient city.
  69: frère de Bohême. Kings then as now addressed each other as «my
  brother».
  70: vous êtes familier, «I count you as an intimate friend.»
  71: J'y suis! «I have succeeded.»
  72: son poignard, see act II, scene 2.
  73: au mur de Balthazar, «on Belshazzar's wall». See the Book of
  Daniel, v. 5.
  74: Les rois Rodrigue font les comtes Julien. Roderick, King of
  Andalusia, assumed sway over all Spain in 709. In the opposition was a
  certain Count Julian, commander of the Gothic forces in Morocco, who
  betrayed his master's forces to the Saracens. These, victorious in
  Africa, crossed into Spain and defeated and killed Roderick in 711.
  He has been called the last of the Goths, and is the subject of an
  ambitious poem by Robert Southey. According to Spanish legend, as
  embodied in ancient ballads, the treachery of Count Julian was an act
  of revenge for the dishonoring of his sister by King Roderick.
  75: Segorbe, a town in Valencia, in eastern Spain.
  76: Cordona, a small town in Catalonia, in northeastern Spain.
  77: Monroy, Monroyo, a small town in eastern Spain, a few miles west
  of Tortosa.
  78: Albatera, a village in Valencia, in eastern Spain.
  79: Gor. Venta de Gor is a small village a few miles north of
  Granada.
  80: grand maitre d'Avis. The order of Avis was a Portuguese
  decoration.
  81: penser, infinitive used as noun.
  82: Laisse régner l'esprit. Speaking to his heart, he bids it cease
  to disturb his mind, which is full of lofty purposes.
  83: The Austrian coat of arms contains a double-headed eagle with an
  escutcheon on its breast.
  84: Saint Étienne, Saint Stephen.
  85: misères du roi, «pettiness of the king».
  86: Le Danois à punir, perhaps an allusion to the fact that the
  Danish parliament was one of the first large political bodies to defy
  the Pope and set up a national church (1527).
  87: Le Saint-Père à payer. Pope Leo X adroitly avoided declaring
  himself for either Charles or Francis, yet maintained such a position
  that the successful competitor should consider himself his debtor.
  88: Venise. Robertson says that the «views and interest of the
  Venetians were not different from those of the Pope», and yet that
  they sided with Francis, because they had more to fear and to hope
  from him.
  89: Soliman. Soliman the Magnificent, Emperor of Constantinople, was
  knocking loudly at the doors of western Europe, and one of the reasons
  why Frederick the Wise declined his election was that Charles would
  prove a stronger power against the Turks.
  
  
  ACT V.
  
  1: cherchant fortune, «a-courting».
  2: Vouliez-vous pas qu'il mît son cercueil de la noce? «You wouldn't
  have him drag his coffin into the wedding?»
  3: lui fait ombre, «disturbs him».
  4: Pourpoint de comte, empli de conseils d'alguazil, «Count's
  doublet, full of wise saws and modern instances.»
  5: Il n'avait garde. «He was careful not to.»
  6: Il trouve à qui parler. «I am not afraid of a conversation with
  him.»
  7: par la rampe de l'escalier, «along the balustrade of the
  stairway».
  8: Quelque mauvais plaisant, «some would-be joker».
  9: en attendant l'enfer, «before he comes to fetch us to hell».
  10: C'est un plaisant drôle, «He's a queer lot!» Here _plaisant_ is
  the adjective; in note 1, preface, it was the noun.
  11: celle-ci, «this dance».
  12: In prose this would be: _qu'avec vous mon mari les compte_.
  13: Il compte, «He keeps time».
  14: Saint Jacques monseigneur, «By my lord St. James!»
  15: amie, «my dear».
  16: Vienne ma doña Sol, «Let but my doña Sol come», etc.
  17: Qu'on nous laisse, «Let them but leave us».
  18: mis de la sorte, «dressed in this way».
  19: Two weak and superfluous lines.
  20: Seriez vous dans cette sérénade de moitié! «Have you not had a
  hand in this serenade?»
  21: Ce devrait être fait. «This must be ended.»
  22: Fussé-je votre fille. «Even were I your daughter.»
  23: Qu'ils sont heureux! A phrase of great power. Observe also that
  Hernani suppresses almost all evidence of his pain in the presence of
  Doña Sol.