FR: il se le sera fait rendre

[wm138]

Je compte bien, dit Fabrice d'un grand sérieux, faire remettre ce qu'il faudra au maître du cheval pour le rembourser des frais d'affiches et autres, à la suite desquels il se le sera fait rendre par les paysans qui l'auront trouvé;

1) Is the English translation correct? Any other expenses which he may be made to incur by the _contadini_ who may have found it; I think it should be:

After the announcements, etc. he would be returned the horse which the peasants have found

2) In French:

why "se"? "le" refers to what?

Merci!

Stendhal (2011-03-30). La Chartreuse de Parme (Kindle Locations 2522-2523). Kindle Edition.

 

[Keith Bradford]

se = to himself
le = it (the horse)

 

[djweaverbeaver]

Hello,

The translation you found online is the correct one. It is a causitive constuction (ie. faire + infinitif = to have sth done/to make s.o. do sth). There are two examples of this in your sentence: faire remettre and se faire rendre. Also, it is in the passive voice. The se is reflexive, referring to il (= le maître) and the le refers to the horse (le cheval).
Below are two translations I found of the sentence. The first one clearly shows this construction, but I think that the second one offers a clearer in certain points.

"I fully intend,” said Fabrizio, with the utmost seriousness, “to send whatever is necessary to the owner of the horse to recompense him for the cost of advertising and any other expenses which he may be made to incur by the _contadini_ who may have found it.

"I certainly intend," said Fabrizio very gravely, " to send the owner of the horse whatever sum may be necessary to pay him the expenses of advertising, and any others he may have incurred in recovering the beast from the peasants who must have found it.

I hope this helps.

 

[Dupon]

I have two questions here:

1. faire remettre ce qu'il faudra au maître du cheval:
make the owner of the horse to send what he needs OR send whatever he needs to the owner of the horse.
Which one is correct? As per some sentences on the dictionary, I guess the former one should be correct.

2. il se le sera fait rendre par les paysans qui l'auront trouvé:
This sentence is a passive mode. In an active sentence, it should be Les paysans rendre lui le.
but as I think, "lui" is the “objet indirect”, why it can be changed into the subject which is "il" in the passive mode.

 

[MarcusK]

1. Send whatever the owner of the horse needs (au maître = to the owner).

2. In the active mode it would be "Les paysans le lui auront rendu".

 

[Dupon]

For the point 2, if change this sentence into passive mode, which one of "le" or "lui" could be changed into subject?

 

[jann]

It is always and only ever the direct object that can become the subject of a passive voice construction. So that means that the horse (represented by le in sentence 2) will be the subject... but of course you must replace le with either a noun or a subject pronoun.

Il (=le cheval) lui sera rendu par les paysans qui l'auront trouvé.

 

[Dupon]

But it is "il se le sera fait rendre par les paysans". In "se faire + inf", is this a passive mode or active mode, the "object indirect" can be changed into subject? I am confused with this structure.

Are these 3 structures the same?
Il(=le maître) se le(=le cheval) sera fait rendre par les paysans qui l'auront trouvé.
Il(=le cheval) lui sera rendu par les paysans qui l'auront trouvé.
Les paysans le(=le cheval) lui(=le maître) auront rendu.

 

[MarcusK]

1. "Il (le maître) se le sera fait rendre par les paysans..." is actually not really a passive construction. The passive mode uses the verb "être", whereas here the verb "se faire..." is used. Besides in the passive mode the direct object (le cheval) becomes the subject, whereas here "Il" (le maître) is subject. However the meaning conveyed by "se faire..." is comparable to that of the passive mode, because the action is expressed in an indirect way, but it's not the same as an actual passive.

2. "Il (le cheval) lui sera rendu par les paysans..." is in the passive mode.

3. "Les paysans le lui auront rendu" is in the active mode, but a compound future tense is used here (auront rendu). With "futur simple", it would be "Les paysans le lui rendront". I suggested this because "Il se le sera fait rendre par les paysans..." also uses a compound future ("futur antérieur"). With "futur simple", it would be "Il se le fera rendre par les paysans..."

 

[Dupon]

Thanks for the answer. And for another point:faire remettre ce qu'il faudra au maître du cheval
As I checked on the dictionary, faire+inf+object of inf(A)+à+quelqu'un(B), this means make B do A.
But why do you think the sentence here means: Send whatever he needs to the owner of the horse.
Do you judge this based on the context?

 

[MarcusK]

Yes it's based mainly on the context, because "make B do A" wouldn't make sense given what follows in the sentence (pour le rembourser...).

 

[analect]

In this context "à la suite desquels" should be translated as "by which" in the sense of "by means of which"? So literally the underlined section in the original quote is, "[any other expenses] by which he made it be returned by the peasants who must have [lit. will have] found it?"

Also does the futur antérieur often have this sense of describing something which is presumed to have happened ("who must have found it")?

 

[jann]

hi Analect,

I believe you have mostly understood the à la suite desquels: if [X] comes à la suite de [Y] then X comes chronologically after Y, often due to the natural/planned flow of events and/or involving some degree of perceived cause-and-effect relationship. So yes, the idea is that the owner will advertise that he has lost his horse, and that it will subsequently be found, recognized, and returned to him, presumably thanks to the awareness generated by his posters and other efforts. Whether the expression ought to be translated as "by which" in this particular sentence is another question entirely, depending on the nature of the translation job and the judgement of the translator as to how best to approach the passage as a whole.

Now consider the start of the sentence. We don't have the full context, but it rather seems that Fabrice may have had a role in the disappearance of the horse. Did he play a prank on the owner? Did he borrow the horse without permission? For whatever reason, he fully intends to reimburse the owner indirectly (faire remettre) for the costs of recovering the animal. He also seems very confident that the horse will be returned and all will be well -- does he perhaps know where it is? In fact, I wonder if Fabrice intends to obscure the truth of whatever happened, arranging for the horse to be "found" by the local peasants and returned to its master, who, Fabrice anticipates, will have advertised for the missing animal. So depending on how many puppet strings Fabrice is pulling, the lost-horse posters might not really be the "means" of anything -- it all might just be an elaborate charade, narrated as Fabrice indends for the owner to think things came to pass! We would need the context of the whole story to know what's really going on here.

In the third-to-last sentence of the paragraph above, note how we can use "will have advertised" -- a future anterior -- in English to express planning about the relative timing of anticipated future events that have not yet come to pass.

This brings me to your second question. There is no "must have found" here, nor any supposition about past events, because none of this has taken place yet. Literally:

il se le sera fait rendre par les paysans qui l'auront trouvé
he will have caused it to be returned to him by the peasants who will have found it

This tense communicates Fabrice's expectations about the anticipated future events: in his view, there is a high probability that the horse will be found and returned to its owner. Among its other uses, the futur antérieur is well-suited to this kind of anticipation of probable future events (although the relative timing dimension is less of a factor compared to English). See also the extensive discussion in FR: futur antérieur récapitulatif et de probabilité


P.S. Apologies if my response in this thread back in 2012 confused anyone! At the time, I thought I was answering a question about transforming the last clause into "true" passive voice. In retrospect, it seems obvious that the poster was actually asking for help analyzing the causative faire structure.

 

[Maître Capello]

We don't have the full context, but it rather seems that Fabrice may have had a role in the disappearance of the horse.

You can read the full context here. He half-stole, half-borrowed the horse. He then set it free in the hope it would be found as he didn't find a peasant to hand it to.

The futur antérieur is indeed probabilistic in this excerpt. See also the following thread in the Français Seulement section: Futur antérieur conjectural, de probabilité.

 

[analect]

Thank you, Jann & Matre Capello. The thread on the futur conjectural is very helpful. I'd seen that usage before & wondered about it.

I figured it had to be from La Chartreuse de parme, but I didn't remember the incident-- I read it many many years ago, and in translation.