Telling Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) that she wants to leave Beardsley and go for a long trip again, Lolita says that this time she will choose the route and uses the phrase "C’est entendu? (That's settled?):"
“Look,” she said as she rode the bike beside me, one foot scraping the darkly glistening sidewalk, “look, I’ve decided something. I want to leave school. I hate that school. I hate the play, I really do! Never go back. Find another. Leave at once. Go for a long trip again. But this time we’ll go wherever I want, won’t we?”
I nodded. My Lolita.
“I choose? C’est entendu? ” she asked wobbling a little beside me. Used French only when she was a very good little girl.
“Okay. Entendu . Now hop-hop-hop, Lenore, or you’ll get soaked.” (A storm of sobs was filling my chest.)
She bared her teeth and after her adorable school-girl fashioned, leaned forward, and away she sped, my bird.
Miss Lester’s finely groomed hand held a porch-door open for a waddling old dog qui prenait son temps .
Lo was waiting for me near the ghostly birch tree.
“I am drenched,” she declared at the top of her voice. “Are you glad? To hell with the play! See what I mean?”
An invisible hag’s claw slammed down an upper-floor window.
In our hallway, ablaze with welcoming lights, my Lolita peeled off her sweater, shook her gemmed hair, stretched towards me two bare arms, raised one knee:
“Carry me upstairs, please. I feel sort of romantic tonight.”
It may interest physiologists to learn, at this point, that I have the ability - a most singular case, I presume - of shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest. (2.14)
In his stroy Grafinya Lamott ("Countess Lamotte," 1936) Mark Aldanov (a Russian writer, 1886-1957) says that C'est entendu (a strange phrase in the note that Countess Lamotte received in prison) was used only by Queen Marie Antoinette and Cardinal de Rohan:
Однажды часовой, дежуривший в тюремном дворе, просунул Анжелике в окно на дуле ружья записку, в которой говорилось, что кто-то хочет спасти госпожу Ламотт. Графиня до конца своей жизни уверяла, что так и не знает, кто был ее таинственный благодетель. Однако неясные догадки приходили ей в голову. В записке были слова: "C'est entendu", выражение, казалось бы, самое обыкновенное. Но госпожа Ламотт пишет, что "это странное выражение" употребляли только королева Мария Антуанетта и кардинал Роган. (VII)
In his story Aldanov mentions a question ("what is worse: to lie dead in the earth or to walk poor on the earth?") raised in A Thousand and One Nights:
В "Тысяче и одной ночи" поставлен вопрос, что хуже: лежать мертвым под землей или гулять бедным на земле? Восточная мудрость отвечает, что хуже гулять бедным на земле. С другой стороны, Андре Шенье сказал: "Une pauvreté libre est un plaisir si doux", -- и тысячу раз умиленно цитировалась эта глупость большого поэта -- бедности он не знал, а "свобода" привела его на эшафот. Графиня Ламотт в детстве просила милостыню, и, по-видимому, "свободная бедность" не оставила у нее приятного воспоминания. Она стремилась к богатству, не останавливаясь ни перед чем, почти не обдумывая своих поступков: мелкие аферы приносили ей небольшие деньги -- значит, нужно заняться крупной аферой. (IV)
During their second road trip across the USA Humbert and Lolita have breakfast in the township of Soda, pop. 1001:
We had breakfast in the township of Soda, pop. 1001.
“Judging by the terminal figure,” I remarked, “Fatface is already here.”
“Your humor,” said Lo, “is sidesplitting, deah fahther.” (2.18)
A little earlier Lolita draws Humbert’s attention to the three nines changing into the next thousand in the odometer:
“If he’s really a cop,” she said shrilly but not illogically, “the worst thing we could do, would be to show him we are scared. Ignore him, Dad.”
“Did he ask where we were going?”
“Oh, he knows that” (mocking me).
“Anyway,” I said, giving up, “I have seen his face now. He is not pretty. He looks exactly like a relative of mine called Trapp.”
“Perhaps he is Trapp. If I were you - Oh, look, all the nines are changing into the next thousand. When I was a little kid,” she continued unexpectedly, “I used to think they’d stop and go back to nines, if only my mother agreed to put the car in reverse.”
It was the first time, I think, she spoke spontaneously of her pre-Humbertian childhood; perhaps, the theatre had taught her that trick; and silently we traveled on, unpursued. (ibid.)