If one knows that Ursus is a character in
Hugo's L'homme qui rit, it doesn't come as a surprise that Montparnasse
(http://www.classicreader.com/book/268/199/,
if you want to learn more about him) is a character in
Hugo's Les Miserables (1863). In Ada, "Guillaume de
Monparnasse" (sic) is the pen-name of Mlle Larivière, Lucette's governess. The leaving out of the "t" in the second
(or rather third, if we count the particule in the
middle) component of her nom de plume should make it more intime
(1.31).
In the old Russian alphabet, the letter "t"
was called tvyordo ("hard," used as an adverb in the sense
"firmly," "solidly," etc.). I would have amused you with my observations on the
subject, if I had not been somewhat disappointed with the List's cool
response to my ideas about dobro ("good," used as a noun), yet
another letter of the old Russian alphabet, a few months
ago.
By the way, does anybody know who is the author of
the aphorism (that occurs in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs,"
1927, and in at least one other Russian novel of the time) "children are
the flowers of life"?
Alexey Sklyarenko