In "Lolita" we read about Humbert's first wife Valeria and get a few snatches of their life together before she asks for a divorce. Humbert writes about her next husband, a taxi-driver who "pulled up at a small café and introduced himself. I do not remember his ridiculous name but after all those years I still see him quite clearly — a stocky White Russian ex-colonel with a bushy mustache and a crew cut; there were thousands of them plying that fool's trade in Paris."  In the course of his report Humbert finally remembers the man's name and his wife's maiden name: " I had my little revenge in due time. A man from Pasadena told me one day that Mrs. Maximovich née Zborovski had died in childbirth around 1945."

Inspite of his negative view about women writers, Nabokov described his fond encounter with his uncle's collection from "La Bibliothèque Rose" and was able to recall innumerous details of Sophie's adventures from one of the Countess of Ségur's novels:

" Once, in 1908 or 1909, Uncle Ruka became engrossed in some French children’s books that he had come upon in our house; with an ecstatic moan, he found a passage he had loved in his childhood, beginning: “Sophie n’etait pas jolie …” and many years later, my moan echoed his, when I rediscovered, in a chance nursery, those same “Bibliotheque Rose” volumes, with their stories about boys and girls who led in France an idealized version of the vie de chateau which my family led in Russia. The stories themselves (all those Les Malheurs de Sophie, Les Petites Filles Modeles, Les Vacances) are, as I see them now, an awful combination of preciosity and vulgarity; but in writing them the sentimental and smug Mme de Segur, nee Rostopchine, was Frenchifying the authentic surroundings of her Russian childhood which preceded mine by exactly one century. In my own case, when I come over Sophie’s troubles again—her lack of eyebrows and love of thick cream—I not only go through the same agony and delight that my uncle did, but have to cope with an additional burden—the recollection I have of him, reliving his childhood with the help of those very books. I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window. Its reflection fills the oval mirror above the leathern couch where my uncle sits, gloating over a tattered book. A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die." Speak, Memory, ch. 3

Valeria and her affair with a Russian taxi-driver reminds me of another sentimental book (now addressed to young ladies, not girls) that enjoyed considerable success in France. It was written by Max du Veuzit (a French novelist named Alphonsine Zéphirine Vavasseur,1876 -1952) with the title "John, chauffeur russe",  published in Paris in 1931.  

I never thought there were sufficient elements in common between Valeria and the novel's young heiress Micaela, who'd fallen in love with her Russian driver (actually, a Russian prince), whom she dismissively called John. Nor was this kind of literature one that would have merited Nabokov's attention outside of the enchanted space in Vyra and Uncle Ruka's delighted moans. However, when I was able to recover the chauffeur's actual name in Mme Alphonsine Vavasseur's novel I was struck by the similarity between two of the names. The Russian chauffeur's is Alexander Isboriski. The unnecessary dropping of Mrs. Maximovich's (Valeria's) maiden name in the few paragraphs containing her story in "Lolita" summoned up a certain Zborovski. Following the "Chekhov's gun" expression... what does the inclusion of Zborovki mean in the context of "Lolita"?

I'm pretty sure that such association by sounds only arises in someone who, like me, is totally tone-deaf to the Russian language. Nevertheless, it's still worth a try: are there any links between the two surnames that could justify a distant reference to Max du Veuzit's novel in "Lolita"?