According to Ada, Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father) called Dorothy Vinelander (Ada’s sister-in-law) l'impayable ("priceless for impudence and absurdity") Dorothy:
'And then, one day, Demon warned me that he would not come any more if he heard again poor Andrey's poor joke (Nu i balagur-zhe vy, Dementiy Labirintovich) or what Dorothy, l'impayable ("priceless for impudence and absurdity") Dorothy, thought of my camping out in the mountains with only Mayo, a cowhand, to protect me from lions.' (3.8)
In Knyazhna Meri (“Princess Mary”), the fourth novella in Lermontov’s novel Geroy nashego vremeni (“A Hero of Our Time,” 1840), a stout lady at the ball is not pleased with Princess Mary and exclaims c’est impayable! (“it’s delicious”):
Я стоял сзади одной толстой дамы, осенённой розовыми перьями; пышность её платья напоминала времена фижм, а пестрота её негладкой кожи – счастливую эпоху мушек из чёрной тафты. Самая большая бородавка на её шее прикрыта была фермуаром. Она говорила своему кавалеру, драгунскому капитану:
– Эта княжна Лиговская пренесносная девчонка! Вообразите, толкнула меня и не извинилась, да ещё обернулась и посмотрела на меня в лорнет… C’est impayable!.. И чем она гордится? Уж её надо бы проучить…
I was standing behind a certain stout lady who was overshadowed by rose-colored feathers. The magnificence of her dress reminded me of the times of the farthingale, and the motley hue of her by no means smooth skin, of the happy epoch of the black taffeta patch. An immense wart on her neck was covered by a clasp. She was saying to her cavalier, a captain of dragoons:
“That young Princess Ligovskoy is a most intolerable creature! Just fancy, she jostled against me and did not apologize, but even turned round and stared at me through her lorgnette! . . . C’est impayable! . . . And what has she to be proud of? It is time somebody gave her a lesson” . . . (Pechorin’s Diary, the entry of May 22)
Mayo seems to hint at Mayoshka (Lermontov’s nickname in the military school, after Mayeux, a popular cartoon character of the 1830s). In his narrative poem Mongo (1836) Lermontov (the author of “The Demon”) depicts himself as Mayoshka and his friend and relative Alexey Stolypin as Mongo.
Lions mentioned by Ada bring to mind the hero’s fight with bars (the snow leopard) in Lermontov’s poem Mtsyri (1840):
Ко мне он кинулся на грудь;
Но в горло я успел воткнуть
И там два раза повернуть
Моё оружье... Он завыл,
Рванулся из последних сил,
И мы, сплетясь, как пара змей,
Обнявшись крепче двух друзей,
Упали разом, и во мгле
Бой продолжался на земле.
He rushed my chest in one swift bound;
but with my weapon I had found
his throat, twice I had turned it round…
he whined, and with his final strength
began to jerk and twitch; at length,
like a snake-couple tight-enlaced,
more closely than two friends embraced,
we fell together, in dark night
continued on the ground our fight. (XVIII)
(tr. C. H. Johnston)
According to Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister), she and Ada interweaved like serpents and sobbed like pumas, when they made love at Marina Ranch:
‘She taught me practices I had never imagined,’ confessed Lucette in rerun wonder. ‘We interweaved like serpents and sobbed like pumas. We were Mongolian tumblers, monograms, anagrams, adalucindas. She kissed my krestik while I kissed hers, our heads clamped in such odd combinations that Brigitte, a little chambermaid who blundered in with her candle, thought for a moment, though naughty herself, that we were giving birth simultaneously to baby girls, your Ada bringing out une rousse and no one’s Lucette, une brune. Fancy that.’
‘Side-splitting,’ said Van.
‘Oh, it went on practically every night at Marina Ranch, and often during siestas; otherwise, in between those vanouissements (her expression), or when she and I had the flow, which, believe it or not —’
‘I can believe anything,’ said Van.
‘— took place at coincident dates, we were just ordinary sisters, exchanging routine nothings, having little in common, she collecting cactuses or running through her lines for the next audition in Sterva, and I reading a lot, or copying beautiful erotic pictures from an album of Forbidden Masterpieces that we found, apropos, in a box of korsetov i khrestomatiy (corsets and chrestomathies) which Belle had left behind, and I can assure you, they were far more realistic than the scroll-painting by Mong Mong, very active in 888, a millennium before Ada said it illustrated Oriental calisthenics when I found it by chance in the corner of one of my ambuscades. So the day passed, and then the star rose, and tremendous moths walked on all sixes up the window panes, and we tangled until we fell asleep. And that’s when I learnt —’ concluded Lucette, closing her eyes and making Van squirm by reproducing with diabolical accuracy Ada’s demure little whimper of ultimate bliss. (2.5)
“The scroll-painting by Mong Mong” brings to mind Lermontov’s poem Mongo. In Ilf and Petrov’s novel Dvenadtsat’ stulyev (“The Twelve Chairs,” 1928) Father Fyodor calls the eagle that stole the remains of the sausage sterva (“bitch of a bird”):
Шли облака. Над отцом Фёдором кружились орлы. Самый смелый из них украл остаток любительской колбасы и взмахом крыла сбросил в пенящийся Терек фунта полтора хлеба. Отец Фёдор погрозил орлу пальцем и, лучезарно улыбаясь, прошептал:
― Птичка божия не знает ни заботы, ни труда, хлопотливо не свивает долговечного гнезда. Орёл покосился на отца Фёдора, закричал “ку-ку-ре-ку” и улетел.
― Ах, орлуша, орлуша, большая ты стерва!
Через десять дней из Владикавказа прибыла пожарная команда с надлежащим обозом и принадлежностями и сняла отца Фёдора. Когда его снимали, он хлопал руками и пел лишённым приятности голосом: И будешь ты цар-р-рицей ми-и-и-и-рра, подр-р-руга ве-е-ечная моя! И суровый Кавказ многократно повторил слова М. Ю. Лермонтова и музыку А. Рубинштейна.
Clouds drifted by. Eagles cruised above Father Fyodor’s head. The bravest of them stole the remains of the sausage and with its wings swept a pound and a half of bread into the foaming Terek. Father Fyodor wagged his finger at the eagle and, smiling radiantly, whispered: "God's bird does not know Either toil or unrest, It never builds A long-lasting nest."
The eagle looked sideways at Father Fyodor, squawked cockadoodledoo and flew away.
"Oh, eagle, you eagle, you bitch of a bird!"
Ten days later the Vladikavkaz fire brigade arrived with suitable equipment and brought Father Theodore down.
As they were lowering him, he clapped his hands and sang in a tuneless voice:
"And you will be queen of all the world, My lifelo-ong frie-nd!"
And the rugged Caucuses re-echoed Rubinstein's setting of the Lermontov poem many times. (chapter 38 “Up in the Clouds”)
As he speaks to Ellochka the Cannibal, Ostap Bender (the main character in "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf") mentions the fur of shankhayskie barsy (Shanghai leopards):
Остап сразу понял, как вести себя в светском обществе. Он закрыл глаза и сделал шаг назад.
— Прекрасный мех! — воскликнул он.
— Шутите! — сказала Эллочка нежно. — Это мексиканский тушкан.
— Быть этого не может. Вас обманули. Вам дали гораздо лучший мех. Это шанхайские барсы. Ну да! Барсы! Я узнаю их по оттенку. Видите, как мех играет на солнце!.. Изумруд! Изумруд!
Эллочка сама красила мексиканского тушкана зеленой акварелью и потому похвала утреннего посетителя была ей особенно приятна.
Ostap knew at once how he should behave in such high society. He closed his eyes and took a step backwards.
"A beautiful fur!" he exclaimed.
"You're kidding," said Ellochka tenderly. "It's Mexican jerboa."
"It can't be. They made a mistake. You were given a much better fur. It's Shanghai leopard. Yes, leopard. I recognize it by the shade. You see how it reflects the sun. Just like emerald!"
Ellochka had dyed the Mexican jerboa with green water-colour herself, so the morning visitor's praise was particularly pleasing. (Chapter XXII)
Ellochka's friend Fima Sobak (a cultured girl whose vocabulary consists of 180 words and includes the word "homosexuality") brings to mind Cordula Tobak, Van's former mistress whom Van suspected of being a lesbian and whom Ada calls "Cordula Tobacco, alias Mme Perwitzky:"
‘She’s terribly nervous, the poor kid,’ remarked Ada stretching across Van toward the Wipex. ‘You can order that breakfast now — unless... Oh, what a good sight! Orchids. I’ve never seen a man make such a speedy recovery.’
‘Hundreds of whores and scores of cuties more experienced than the future Mrs Vinelander have told me that.’
‘I may not be as bright as I used to be,’ sadly said Ada, ‘but I know somebody who is not simply a cat, but a polecat, and that’s Cordula Tobacco alias Madame Perwitsky, I read in this morning’s paper that in France ninety percent of cats die of cancer. I don’t know what the situation is in Poland.’ (2.8).
Perwitzky is the fur of the rare tiger polecat, Foetorius sarmaticus. In Shakespeare's play The Merry Wives of Windsor "polecat" became a nickname of a promiscuous or loose-moraled woman. In "The Twelve Chairs" the vocabulary of Ellochka the Cannibal is contrasted to that of William Shakespeare:
Словарь Вильяма Шекспира, по подсчету исследователей, составляет 12000 слов. Словарь негра из людоедского племени «Мумбо-Юмбо» составляет 300 слов.
Эллочка Щукина легко и свободно обходилась тридцатью.
William Shakespeare's vocabulary has been estimated by the experts at twelve thousand words. The vocabulary of a Negro from the Mumbo Jumbo tribe amounts to three hundred words.
Ellochka Shchukin managed easily and fluently on thirty. (Chapter XXII)
Part One of "The Twelve Chairs" is entitled Stargorodskiy lev ("The Lion of Stargorod ").
At the beginning of Mtsyri Lermontov compares the rivers Aragva and Kura to dve sestry (two sisters):
Немного лет тому назад,
Там, где, сливаяся, шумят,
Обнявшись, будто две сестры,
Струи Арагвы и Куры,
Был монастырь.
The time - not many years ago;
The place - a point where meet and flow
In sisterly embrace the fair
Aragva and Kurah; right there
A monastery stood. (I)
(transl. by VN; see Speak, Memory, Chapter Eight, 3)
Mikhail L.
Yes, indeed the phrase is to be the found in Lermontov's novel which in Dmitri Nabokov's translation (close to what you quote) reads:
"That young Princess Ligovskoy is an intolerable little thing! Fancy, she bumped into me and never apologized, but in addition turned around and looked at me through her lorgnette… C’est impayable!… And what is she so proud of? She ought to be taught a lesson…"
Although VN mentions in the Foreword that his favourite chapter from the novel is Chap V "The Fatalist"; I must say Chap IV, "Princess Mary" is as good as the last episode. And of course, the novel is inextricably tied to the poem "The Triple Dream" which Alexey is so fond of!
PS - Why does Ada imitate mountain lions from Part II of Ada?
mountain lions in Ada
According to Ada, Vanda Broom (Ada’s lesbian schoolmate at Brownhill) was shot dead by the girlfriend of a girlfriend on a starry night, in Ragusa of all places:
Would she like to stay in this apartment till Spring Term (he thought in terms of Terms now) and then accompany him to Kingston, or would she prefer to go abroad for a couple of months — anywhere, Patagonia, Angola, Gululu in the New Zealand mountains? Stay in this apartment? So, she liked it? Except some of Cordula’s stuff which should be ejected — as, for example, that conspicuous Brown Hill Alma Mater of Almehs left open on poor Vanda’s portrait. She had been shot dead by the girlfriend of a girlfriend on a starry night, in Ragusa of all places. It was, Van said, sad. Little Lucette no doubt had told him about a later escapade? Punning in an Ophelian frenzy on the feminine glans? Raving about the delectations of clitorism? ‘N’exagérons pas, tu sais,’ said Ada, patting the air down with both palms. ‘Lucette affirmed,’ he said, ‘that she (Ada) imitated mountain lions.’ (2.6)
In Lermontov's poem Vykhozhu odin ya na dorogu… (“I go out on the road alone…” 1841) star with star converses:
Выхожу один я на дорогу;
Сквозь туман кремнистый путь блестит;
Ночь тиха. Пустыня внемлет богу,
И звезда с звездою говорит.
Alone I set out on the road;
The flinty path is sparkling in the mist;
The night is still. The desert harks to God,
And star with star converses.
Ragusa is the Italian name of Dubrovnik (a seaport in S Croatia, on the Adriatic). On the other hand, Ragusa is a city in southern Italy, on the island of Sicily. Describing poor mad Aqua’s “War of the Worlds,” Van mentions Altar (the Antiterran name of Gibraltar) and Palermontovia (a country that blends Palermo, the biggest city in and the capital of Sicily, with Lermontov):
A small map of the European part of the British Commonwealth - say, from Scoto-Scandinavia to the Riviera, Altar and Palermontovia - as well as most of the U.S.A., from Estoty and Canady to Argentina, might be quite thickly prickled with enameled red-cross-flag pins, marking, in her War of the Worlds, Aqua's bivouacs. (1.3)
The Latin name of Palermo is Panormus. In his essay Panorama Moskvy (“The Panorama of Moscow,” 1834) Lermontov calls the Kremlin altar’ Rossii (“the altar of Russia”) and compares it to phoenix (the legendary bird that is reborn from ashes):
Что сравнить с этим Кремлём, который, окружась зубчатыми стенами, красуясь золотыми главами соборов, возлежит на высокой горе, как державный венец на челе грозного владыки?..
Он алтарь России, на нём должны совершаться и уже совершались многие жертвы, достойные отечества... Давно ли, как баснословный феникс, он возродился из пылающего своего праха?..
Dorothy Vinelander reads to her ill brother old issues of Golos Feniksa ("The Phoenix Voice," Russian language newspaper in Arizona, 3.8).
The War of the Worlds (1898) is a novel by H. G. Wells. In Russia in the Shadows (1921), a series of articles that H. G. Wells wrote after visiting the Soviet Russia, the author of The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man (another Wells novel alluded to in Ada, 1.32) calls Lenin "the Kremlin dreamer."
In the last game of Flavita (the Russian Scrabble) that Van played at Ardis with Ada and Lucette the latter’s letters formed the word Kremlin:
‘Je ne peux rien faire,’ wailed Lucette, ‘mais rien — with my idiotic Buchstaben, REMNILK, LINKREM...’
‘Look,’ whispered Van, ‘c’est tout simple, shift those two syllables and you get a fortress in ancient Muscovy.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Ada, wagging her finger at the height of her temple in a way she had. ‘Oh, no. That pretty word does not exist in Russian. A Frenchman invented it. There is no second syllable.’
‘Ruth for a little child?’ interposed Van.
‘Ruthless!’ cried Ada.
‘Well,’ said Van, ‘you can always make a little cream, KREM or KREME — or even better — there’s KREMLI, which means Yukon prisons. Go through her ORHIDEYA.’
‘Through her silly orchid,’ said Lucette. (1.36)
The name Flavita comes from alfavit (alphabet):
That was why she [Ada] admitted ‘Flavita.’ The name came from alfavit, an old Russian game of chance and skill, based on the scrambling and unscrambling of alphabetic letters. It was fashionable throughout Estoty and Canady around 1790, was revived by the ‘Madhatters’ (as the inhabitants of New Amsterdam were once called) in the beginning of the nineteenth century, made a great comeback, after a brief slump, around 1860, and now a century later seems to be again in vogue, so I am told, under the name of ‘Scrabble,’ invented by some genius quite independently from its original form or forms. (1.36)
One of the chapters of Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs" is entitled Alfavit "Zerkalo zhizni" ("The Mirror-of-Life Index"). Mme Gritsatsuev (a passionate woman, a poet’s dream, whom Ostap Bender marries in Stargorod) brings to mind the Gritz mentioned by Van in the Flavita chapter of Ada:
The set [of Flavita] our three children received in 1884 from an old friend of the family (as Marina’s former lovers were known), Baron Klim Avidov, consisted of a large folding board of saffian and a boxful of weighty rectangles of ebony inlaid with platinum letters, only one of which was a Roman one, namely the letter J on the two joker blocks (as thrilling to get as a blank check signed by Jupiter or Jurojin). It was, incidentally, the same kindly but touchy Avidov (mentioned in many racy memoirs of the time) who once catapulted with an uppercut an unfortunate English tourist into the porter’s lodge for his jokingly remarking how clever it was to drop the first letter of one’s name in order to use it as a particule, at the Gritz, in Venezia Rossa. (ibid.)
Baron Klim Avidov is an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov. Venezia Rossa brings to mind Lermontov's poem Venetsiya ("Venice," 1830-31) and venets ternovyi (the crown of thorns) mentioned by Lermontov in his poem Smert' poeta ("Death of the Poet," 1837):
И прежний сняв венок, — они венец терновый,
Увитый лаврами, надели на него:
Но иглы тайные сурово
Язвили славное чело;
Отравлены его последние мгновенья
Коварным шёпотом насмешливых невежд,
И умер он — с напрасной жаждой мщенья,
С досадой тайною обманутых надежд.
Замолкли звуки чудных песен,
Не раздаваться им опять:
Приют певца угрюм и тесен,
И на устах его печать.
And they removed his wreath, and set upon his head
A crown of thorns entwined in laurel:
The hidden spines were cruel
And pierced his noble brow;
Poisoned were his final moments
By sly insinuations of mockers ignorant,
And thus he died - for vengeance vainly thirsting
Secretly vexed by false hopes deceived.
The wondrous singing's ceased,
T'will never sound again.
His refuge, gloomy and small,
His lips forever sealed.
"The Lion of Stargorod" (the title of Part One of "The Twelve Chairs") is Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, the former marshal of nobility. Elena Stanislavovna Bour (Vorobyaninov’s former mistress) reads Mme Gritsatsuev’s palm:
Набело гадали по руке. Линии руки вдовы Грицацуевой были чисты, мощны и безукоризненны. Линия жизни простиралась так далеко, что конец её заехал в пульс, и если линия говорила правду, вдова должна была бы дожить до страшного суда. Линия ума и искусства давали право надеяться, что вдова бросит торговлю бакалеей и подарит человечеству непревзойденные шедевры в какой угодно области искусства, науки или обществоведения. Бугры Венеры у вдовы походили на маньчжурские сопки и обнаруживали чудесные запасы любви и нежности. Всё это гадалка объяснила вдове, употребляя слова и термины, принятые в среде графологов, хиромантов и лошадиных барышников.
A fair copy of the prediction was made from the widow's hand. The lines of her hand were clean, powerful, and faultless. Her life line stretched so far that it ended up at her pulse and, if it told the truth, the widow should have lived till doomsday. The head line and line of brilliancy gave reason to believe that she would give up her grocery business and present mankind with masterpieces in the realm of art, science, and social studies. Her Mounts of Venus resembled Manchurian volcanoes and revealed incredible reserves of love and affection. The fortune-teller explained all this to the widow, using the words and phrases current among graphologists, palmists, and horse-traders. (Chapter 10 “The Mechanic, the Parrot and the Fortune-Teller”)
Reading Van’s palm (‘Hump of Venus disfigured, Line of Life scarred but monstrously long…’ (switching to a gipsy chant:) ‘You’ll live to reach Terra, and come back a wiser and merrier man’ (reverting to his ordinary voice:) ‘What puzzles me as a palmist is the strange condition of the Sister of your Life'), Demon Veen seems to predict his own death in an airplane disaster. The opening poem of Pasternak's collection Sestra moya zhizn' ("My Sister Life," 1922) is Pamyati Demona ("In Memory of the Demon").
Demon Veen perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific. In Alexandre Dumas's “The Three Musketeers” Milady de Winter persuades John Felton, a Puritan, to kill Duke of Buckingham. It seems that Ada managed to persuade the pilot to destroy his machine in midair. Van learns about the catastrophe in which his father died from a newspaper (3.7). Ilf and Petrov were journalists who worked in a newspaper. In his “Reminiscences about Ilf” Evgeniy Petrov (who died in an airplane crash in 1942) quotes the words of Ilf (who died of tuberculosis in 1937) who said that it would be good if he and Petrov perished together in some car or plane catastrophe, then neither of them would be present at their own funeral:
Я не помню, кто из нас произнёс эту фразу:
- Хорошо, если бы мы когда-нибудь погибли вместе, во время какой-нибудь авиационной или автомобильной катастрофы. Тогда ни одному из нас не пришлось бы присутствовать на собственных похоронах.
Кажется, это сказал Ильф. Я уверен, что в эту минуту мы подумали об одном и том же. Неужели наступит такой момент, когда один из нас останется с глазу на глаз с пишущей машинкой? В комнате будет тихо и пусто, и надо будет писать. (1)
Similarly, the girlfriend of a girlfriend who shot poor Vanda dead seems to be Ada.
The title of Lermontov's poem is Son ("The Dream"), not "The Triple Dream."
Inversed
And shall we get the title of a short story by Gogol if we reverse the letters in Son?
Although Ruth ("Ruth for little child" interposed Van) would mean pity in this context, it inevitably brings to my mind (this phrasing works better for you) the biblical Ruth, which Keats had immortalized in the following lines: “Perhaps the self-same song that found a path/ Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home/ She stood in tears amid the alien corn” (Nightingale Ode)
Another stubble field. . .
Aunt Ruth in Ada; sale histoire in Lolita
The guests at the picnic on Ada's twelfth birthday include the Erminin twins and their young pregnant aunt (narrationally a great burden):
The early afternoon sun found new places to brighten and old places to toast. Aunt Ruth dozed with her head on an ordinary bed pillow provided by Mme Forestier, who was knitting a tiny jersey for her charges’ future half-sibling. Lady Erminin, through the bothersome afterhaze of suicide, was, reflected Marina, looking down, with old wistfulness and an infant’s curiosity, at the picnickers, under the glorious pine verdure, from the Persian blue of her abode of bliss. The children displayed their talents: Ada and Grace danced a Russian fling to the accompaniment of an ancient music box (which kept halting in mid-bar, as if recalling other shores, other, radial, waves); Lucette, one fist on her hip, sang a St Malô fisher-song; Greg put on his sister’s blue skirt, hat and glasses, all of which transformed him into a very sick, mentally retarded Grace; and Van walked on his hands. (1.13)
It seems that Aunt Ruth dies in childbirth. In Lolita Mrs. Richard F. Schiller (Lolita’s married name) dies in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest North-west. Humbert Humbert's chess partner at Beardsley, Gaston Godin got involved in a sale histoire, in Naples of all places. Godin blends God (btw., god is Russian for "year") with odin (one; alone). Lermontov's poem "No, I'm not Byron, I'm another..." ends in the line "Myself - or God - or none at all." In Lermontov's poem Vykhozhu odin ya na dorogu ("I go out on the road alone") star with star converses.
According to Ada, Lucette used to call History (that Dorothy Vinelander read at Chose) 'Sale Histoire:'
I have just read Reflections in Sidra, by Ivan Veen, and I regard it as a grand piece, dear Professor. The 'lost shafts of destiny' and other poetical touches reminded me of the two or three times you had tea and muffins at our place in the country about twenty years ago. I was, you remember (presumptuous phrase!), a petite fille modèle practicing archery near a vase and a parapet and you were a shy schoolboy (with whom, as my mother guessed, I may have been a wee bit in love!), who dutifully picked up the arrows I lost in the lost shrubbery of the lost castle of poor Lucette's and happy, happy Adette's childhood, now a 'Home for Blind Blacks' - both my mother and L., I'm sure, would have backed Dasha's advice to turn it over to her Sect. Dasha, my sister-in-law (you must meet her soon, yes, yes, yes, she's dreamy and lovely, and lots more intelligent than I), who showed me your piece, asks me to add she hopes to 'renew' your acquaintance - maybe in Switzerland, at the Bellevue in Mont Roux, in October. I think you once met pretty Miss 'Kim' Blackrent, well, that's exactly dear Dasha's type. She is very good at perceiving and pursuing originality and all kinds of studies which I can't even name! She finished Chose (where she read History - our Lucette used to call it 'Sale Histoire,' so sad and funny!). For her you're le beau ténébreux, because once upon a time, once upon libellula wings, not long before my marriage, she attended - I mean at that time, I'm stuck in my 'turnstyle' - one of your public lectures on dreams, after which she went up to you with her latest little nightmare all typed out and neatly clipped together, and you scowled darkly and refused to take it. Well, she's been after Uncle Dementiy to have him admonish le beau ténébreux to come to Mont Roux Bellevue Hotel, in October, around the seventeenth, I guess, and he only laughs and says it's up to Dashenka and me to arrange matters. (3.7)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): le beau ténébreux: wrapt in Byronic gloom.