The Three-Cornered Hat by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón

First published:El sombrero de tres picos, 1874 (English translation, 1886)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Comedy of intrigue

Time of work: Early nineteenth century

Locale: Spain

The Story:

The early years of the nineteenth century were calm ones for Spain. Life there still followed the old pattern, and an almost medieval attitude toward government existed. The Church was a great power, and government officers treated their commands like petty kingdoms. Corregidor Don Eugenio was a fine example. He ruled one of the Andalusian cities like a little Caesar.

Near the city was a famous old flour mill. Lucas was its owner. There the military and the gentry visited every day to eat the miller’s good food and to talk with the miller’s beautiful wife, Frasquita.

The miller shrewdly put these daily visits to good use. He did not give his food without recompense, although he was never so blunt as to demand anything for his hospitality. If he needed some wood, a word to the bishop would secure him the right to cut some on the bishop’s grounds, or if he needed to have his taxes lowered, a word to Don Eugenio, the corregidor, would suffice. Life for him was pleasant and fruitful. His wife Frasquita was a beautiful woman who loved him deeply and sincerely despite the miller’s ugly face and the slight hump on his back. They joked together and tried to outdo each other in kindness. Only children were lacking to make their love complete.

To those who met every day under the shady grape arbor outside the mill, it became obvious that Don Eugenio had fallen in love with Frasquita. There was nothing unusual in this, for everyone who knew her was in love with her. Fortunately, the miller was not jealous of his wife; she had never given him any reason to be so. Yet where so important a person as Don Eugenio was concerned, suspicion was certain to arise.

Don Eugenio was a sight to see. He wore a huge black three-cornered hat, a scarlet cape, white stockings, and black shoes with gold buckles. His face was deeply wrinkled, for he had no teeth. On his back was a hump much larger than the miller’s, and in his breast a heart much smaller. Nevertheless, he was the corregidor, and everyone bowed to him when he passed, with his bailiff, Weasel, following always at his heels.

One day Don Eugenio came to the mill much earlier than usual, and the miller, spying him at a distance, plotted to surprise him. Knowing that Don Eugenio would try to make love to Frasquita, the miller hid in the grape arbor above the spot where the corregidor would sit. He told his wife to act as if she knew nothing of his presence there.

Don Eugenio began to talk of love, but when he tried to take one of Frasquita’s hands in his own, she knocked over his chair in pretended confusion. At that moment, the miller fell from the arbor. Don Eugenio was furious. The couple pretended that the miller, asleep in the arbor, had not overheard the silly love scene. Although the affair seemed to pass off easily, Don Eugenio planned revenge.

That night, as the miller and his wife were preparing for bed, they heard a knock at the door. It was a messenger from the mayor, demanding that the miller go at once to testify in an important case. The miller, guessing correctly that this request was part of Don Eugenio’s plot, told Frasquita to bolt the door and not to let anyone in after he had gone.

When the miller arrived at the mayor’s home, he found that his testimony was not needed. The mayor, however, insisted that he go up to the loft and spend the night, to be on hand for the trial the next morning. The miller pretended to go to bed, but shortly afterward he let himself down from the window, got his mule, and started back to the mill. On his way he passed another rider whose mule neighed at his and received an answer. Alarmed, the miller turned aside from the road. When he arrived at the mill, he found all the doors open. Furious, he got a gun and crept up to the bedroom. Peeking through the keyhole, he saw Don Eugenio in his bed. The miller did not know what to do. He wanted to kill his wife and Don Eugenio, but he knew he would be hanged for the crime. He went downstairs, where Don Eugenio’s clothes were scattered about on chairs in front of the fire. An idea came to the miller. Turn about is fair play. He dressed in Don Eugenio’s clothes and set out for town.

What had actually happened was different from what the miller suspected. Don Eugenio had come to the house, but Frasquita had let him in only after he had fallen into the millpond. When he had tried to make love to her, she threatened him with a gun. Then she had called the bailiff, who was waiting outside, and told him to put his master to bed. She claimed that she was going for a doctor but instead started out to get her husband. It had been her mule that had alarmed the miller on his way to the house. Don Eugenio had sent the bailiff away at the moment the miller arrived home and judged the circumstances so falsely.

Arriving at the mayor’s house, Frasquita learned that her husband had fled. Together she and the mayor set out for the mill. They arrived in time to meet Don Eugenio leaving in the miller’s clothes. The bailiff had returned, noticed that his master’s clothes were gone, and guessed that the miller had taken them. The whole group, for different reasons, started out for Don Eugenio’s house.

On their arrival the maid, insisting that Don Eugenio had returned home some time before, refused to admit them. Don Eugenio angrily demanded entrance, and at last his wife told the maid to admit the party. They all went upstairs.

Dona Mercedes refused to recognize Don Eugenio until she had learned what he had been doing. Frasquita would not speak to the miller. Dona Mercedes ordered her husband to leave the room. Then she told Frasquita that she had found the miller hiding under her bed. At first she had been furious, but after she heard his story she had become angry at her husband. Frasquita, reconciled with the miller, proved her own innocence by telling him about the neighing mules, and he apologized for doubting her honor.

When Don Eugenio returned to the room, Dona Mercedes refused to tell him anything about what had happened that night and ordered him never to come to her room again. There was nothing his guilty conscience would allow him to say. The miller and his wife went home.

The next day, the bishop and the other officials came to the mill as usual, for they did not want anyone to feel that the night’s happenings had anything to do with the miller’s reputation. Don Eugenio, however, never came to the mill again. The miller and his wife both lived to a happy and prosperous old age.

Critical Evaluation:

THE THREE-CORNERED HAT begins with leisurely descriptions of characters and setting, then abruptly picks up rhythm and moves into two climaxes. It is colorful, funny, and brisk. Most action occurs in the mill, but a dance air was noted in the story by Spain’s greatest musician, Manuel de Falla (who later put the novel into a ballet). The story’s archaic charm, wit, local flavor, and pleasant, almost vaudeville “Spanishism” are inimitable, as are its characterizations. The characters created by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón are usually symbols of good or evil, and his action the struggle between the two forces, but this is less true of his masterpiece, THE THREE-CORNERED HAT. This is also the only Alarcónian novel not soaked in melodrama. Its true significance is that it fuses simple, costumbrista descriptive techniques—once dominant in the Spanish novel—with techniques of the thesis novel. It also combines picaresco (romantic roguery) touches with Spanish realism and is uniquely steeped in the flavor of a vanished past. The novel even inserts political meaning into the plot by reflecting a village’s struggle against the Spanish national government and French ideas.

For THE THREE-CORNERED HAT, Alarcón selected elements from stories of the so-called “blindman’s ballad,” or Spanish oral tradition, that he had heard as a child. His novel was also influenced by Giovanni Boccaccio and was originally intended as a humor story for a Cuban magazine. Remembering a childhood tale, however, Alarcón rewrote the work in six days as a novel. Professor Edwin Place strove to discover other of the novel’s roots and found some in a French tale of adultery that has notable similarities to THE THREE-CORNERED HAT. Alarcón feared that adulterous themes from Boccaccio or French literature could be ruined through vulgarity but believed that they could be beautified and made more Spanish by delicate, deep handling. One of Alarcón’s associates once commented that if he were a knight, grandee, or banker, he would yield his sword, coat-of-arms, or money to become “the hat-maker of the hat that you have put so much into vogue.”

Principal Characters:

• Lucas, a miller
• Frasquita, his wife
• Don Eugenio, the corregidor
• Dona Mercedes, the corregidor’s wife