Here is a slightly different (abridged and simplified) version of my previous post (that I may delete later). I trust this version reads better. Hope you'll enjoy it. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
At the end of his Commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions "a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus" whom he will face sooner or later: