Quédese lo del vengarme a mi cargo
There is a line in Don Quijote, where our gentleman says:
Mas no me llamaría yo Reinaldos de Montalbán si, en levantándome deste lecho, no me lo pagare, a pesar de todos sus encantamentos; y, por agora, tráiganme de yantar, que sé que es lo que más me hará al caso, y quédese lo del vengarme a mi cargo.
I don't... even... Could someone explain the grammar of the last phrase for me, please?
1 Answer
These are my observations; I am not a native speaker, so I may be a bit off the mark, but I hope this at least helps you to get some feel for the grammar at work here.
This sentence, to me, seems to mean "...and leave the business of avenging myself to me."
You could also say, leave the part about revenge to me.
In my mind, another way to write this sentence (in Spanish) would be something like:
"...y que se quede a mi cargo lo del vengarme."
"Quédese" is another way of writing "se quede" or "May it stay". In Don Quijote, I have noticed, often the subjunctive is used without any sort of antecedent (such as 'que' or an impersonal expression), so it seems like a command. The reason I believe it isn't a command in this situation is that before this he says "Tráiganme..." so we know he's speaking to more than one person, therefor this doesn't make sense as a command, since it's not in the right form.
"Lo del vengarme" means basically "the part about getting revenge/avenging myself". "Lo de" can mean "what happened", "the business of", etc. depending on the context. In this phrase, the latter seems to make more sense. The reason it's written "lo del" is because an infinitive is being used as a noun ("vengarme"), so it has to be treated as such grammatically.
Finally, "a mi cargo" means "in my care", or in this case, "to me", as in "leave it to me."
