* - "Before tubbing, Van craned out of his narrow casement to catch sight of the laurels and lilacs flanking the front porch whence came the hubbub of gay departures. He made out Ada. He noticed her running after Percy who had put on his gray topper and was walking away across a lawn which his transit at once caused to overlap in Van’s mind with the fleeting memory of the paddock where he and Van had once happened to discuss a lame horse and Riverlane. Ada overtook the young man in a patch of sudden sunlight; he stopped, and she stood speaking to him and tossing her head in a way she had when nervous or displeased. De Prey kissed her hand. That was French, but all right. He held the hand he had kissed while she spoke and then kissed it again, and that was not done, that was dreadful, that could not be endured.

Leaving his post, naked Van went through the clothes he had shed. He found the necklace. In icy fury, he tore it into thirty, forty glittering hailstones, some of which fell at her feet as she burst into the room.

Her glance swept the floor.

‘What a shame —’ she began."

** - "Although in a hall adjoining the library dark-red cabinets contained my father’s supremely rich collections, consisting of specimens complete with thoroughly accurate names, dates, and places of capture, I personally belonged to the category of curieux who, in order to acquaint themselves properly with a butterfly and to visualize it, require three things; its artistic depiction, a compendium of all that has been written about it, and its insertion within the general system of classification. With no words and no art, without a penetrating and synthesizing process of thought, for me a butterfly would remain incomplete. Only one thing could wholly replace these three demands: if I had caught it myself, if the expression of the given specimen’s wings corresponded to the individual particulars of a familiar habitat (with its smells, hues, and sounds) where I would have lived through all that impassioned, insane joy of the hunt, when as I climb the rock, my face contorted, gasping, shouting voluptuously senseless words, I do not notice thorn or precipice, and see neither the viper under my feet nor the shepherd, yonder, observing with the irritation of ignorance the spasms of the madman with his green net as he approaches his heretofore undescribed prey. In other words, it was impossible to reconcile the creative contact between me and the countless rarities collected by others and not defined in the journals, or hopelessly buried in them. And, even though, through the glass top and bottom of the ultra-sleek sliding cases of my father’s collection (lowering my gaze for hours down endless rows of thickset, small Hesperidae, in various hues of black with specks from hydrochloric acid and checkered fringes, and turning the case upside down to examine pearlescent cabalistic markings — little kegs, hourglasses, trapezes, on the rowan-tinged or sulphury-grayish undersides of the hind wings), aided by the inscriptions on the labels, I could make a meticulous study of the local mutability of forms, it was only when I found those species and races assembled, researched, and especially, illustrated in the just-published Butterflies and Moths of the Russian Empire that a fascinating, lifelike portrait would reveal to me the mystery of the prepared lepidopteron: henceforth it was mine."

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

Search the archive	Contact the Editors	Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla	View Nabokv-L Policies	Manage subscription options