I. Capítulo 1
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A novel of Madrid’s poor, for B2
Misericordia Misericordia
Benito Pérez Galdós
The complete original of Benito Pérez Galdós’s 1897 novel, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 83,600 words and 18 words per sentence on average. 41 chapters about the maid Benina, who feeds a ruined household with lies and alms; chapters VIII and XVI are the densest, and about two thirds of the book runs at 12-20 words per sentence.
- B2
- 83 598 words
- 14-23 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the 28-37 word sentences of chapters I, VIII and XVI will be slow going, and Almudena’s broken speech has to be guessed from context.
B1B2
This text
You can manage it at B2: most chapters run at 12-20 words per sentence with plenty of dialogue, and the dense chapters can be read slowly, translating single words.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the novel reads freely; only the long descriptive sentences of chapters like VIII and XVI and Almudena’s speech still deserve a slow look.
Start readingThe average sentence has 18 words: longer than in Doña Perfecta or Marianela (15 each), shorter than in Pepita Jiménez (22). One word in eleven has 9 letters or more (8.8%), below the 9.9% where the catalog starts C1; Sangre y arena has 10.6% and La barraca 10.2%. The difficulty swings from chapter to chapter: chapters I, VII, VIII, IX, XVI and XXXVII run at 28-37 words per sentence, while VI, XXII and XXXV sit at 12-14. The blind beggar Almudena adds his own broken, dialect-tinged speech. Hence B2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 83 598
- words
- 18
- words in an average sentence
- 14-23
- hours of reading
Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
In Madrid at the end of the nineteenth century, Doña Paca, once a comfortable lady from Ronda, has lost her money and nearly all her friends, but she still keeps up appearances. Her maid Benina, whom she calls Nina, quietly feeds the household with inventions about shopping trips and with alms she gathers among the beggars at the door of the church of San Sebastián, where the blind Pulido, the domineering señá Casiana and the blind storyteller Almudena also keep their posts. Around them move the elderly dandy Frasquito Ponte, the señorita Obdulia and the clockwork-methodical Don Carlos Moreno Trujillo. How long Benina’s secret holds, and what it costs her, is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Misericordia
XIV. Capítulo 14
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Choose an underlined word.
A church with two faces
Galdós describes the church as a person with two faces (dos caras): one looks at the poor lower quarters, the other at the merchants’ Plaza del Ángel. Notice the narrator correcting himself mid-sentence (mejor será decir la iglesia), a habit of his storytelling voice. Fealdad risueña, “smiling ugliness”, sets the tone: affectionate irony, not scorn. The long first sentence rests on two parallel halves, con la una... con la otra, “with one... with the other”.
Almudena’s broken Spanish
The narrator reports the tale in standard, slightly bookish Spanish: dijéronle is dijeron with the pronoun stuck on after the verb, as old literary Spanish still did. Almudena’s own words are quoted in his broken speech: mismo como vosotras ver migo is roughly “just as you see me”, and de baixo terra is his version of “from under the earth”. Reading the narrator’s sentence first and Almudena’s phrases second makes the contrast easy to hear.
Chapters
- ICapítulo 1
- IICapítulo 2
- IIICapítulo 3
- IVCapítulo 4
- VCapítulo 5
- VICapítulo 6
- VIICapítulo 7
- VIIICapítulo 8
- IXCapítulo 9
- XCapítulo 10
- XICapítulo 11
- XIICapítulo 12
- XIIICapítulo 13
- XIVCapítulo 14
- XVCapítulo 15
- XVICapítulo 16
- XVIICapítulo 17
- XVIIICapítulo 18
- XIXCapítulo 19
- XXCapítulo 20
- XXICapítulo 21
- XXIICapítulo 22
- XXIIICapítulo 23
- XXIVCapítulo 24
- XXVCapítulo 25
- XXVICapítulo 26
- XXVIICapítulo 27
- XXVIIICapítulo 28
- XXIXCapítulo 29
- XXXCapítulo 30
- XXXICapítulo 31
- XXXIICapítulo 32
- XXXIIICapítulo 33
- XXXIVCapítulo 34
- XXXVCapítulo 35
- XXXVICapítulo 36
- XXXVIICapítulo 37
- XXXVIIICapítulo 38
- XXXIXCapítulo 39
- XLCapítulo 40
- XLIFinal
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
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The novel opens with a sentence that plays on the church’s two faces: “con la una mira a los barrios bajos, enfilándolos por la calle de Cañizares; con la otra al señorío mercantil de la Plaza del Ángel”. Translating the whole sentence in Reader shows at a glance which face looks at whom.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Benito Pérez Galdós’s complete novel, all 41 chapters from I to the closing chapter called Final. The text is Project Gutenberg’s transcription of the novel that Galdós finished in Madrid in March-April 1897, the date printed at its end, and the reader shows it without cuts.
Is there an audiobook?
Misericordia has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the novel is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for rare or dialect words such as trebejos, and for the broken speech of the blind beggar Almudena.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. In this novel it helps most with the long descriptive sentences, like the opening of chapter I (“Dos caras, como algunas personas, tiene la parroquia de San Sebastián...”), and in chapters VIII and XVI, at 32 and 37 words per sentence. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole novel takes about 14-23 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. Chapters run from about 1,500 to 2,700 words, so one or two make an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
Not steadily: the book alternates. Chapters I, VII, VIII, IX, XVI and XXXVII are the densest, at 28-37 words per sentence, while VI, XXII and XXXV sit at 12-14. About two thirds of the chapters run at 12-20 words, so a dense chapter is usually followed by an easier one.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can come back to the novel every evening where you left off. Any of the 41 chapters also opens from the contents on this page, for example chapter XIV.