4: Fiancée au vieux duc. Such a marriage was not legitimate except by papal dispensation.
5: son vieux futur, «her old intended».
6: Si! Affirmative answer to a negative statement or question.
7: Le manche du balai, an indirect way of calling the duenna an old witch.
8: Est-ce pas. The omission of ne in such a case is frequent enough in everyday speech; but here it is made in order to save a syllable.
9: The first part of this dialogue in Sc. 2 is very beautiful. Notice the eagerness, tinged with melancholy, with which Hernani goes straight to the subject of his love and appeals to Doña Sol's sympathy, while she pretends to think only of his wet mantle, and answers him evasively. The scene reminds one of the celebrated passage in Goethe's «Egmont», where Egmont visits Clãrchen in his Spanish costume.
10: De tempête and d'éclairs depend upon ce in the preceding line.
11: Est mort sur l'échafaud. It is not known that Hugo refers here to any historical incident. The father of the king was Philip the Handsome, son of the Emperor Maximilian, of the house of Austria. The king's mother was Joanna, «crazy Jane», daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. Charles ascended the throne of the Castiles (Old and New) in 1516.
12: IL FAUT QUE J'EN ARRIVE À M'EFFRAYER MOI-MÊME, «Fate has made me a horror to myself.»
13: riche-homme, «high-counsellor», an imitation of the Span. ricohombre.