S.
Gwynn: "Hirondelle," the French spelling of "Irondell," corresponds to
the name of the coach that Emma takes to meet
Leon.
JM:There are indirect links that reinforce the
information about "Irondell" S.Gwynn offered to the list, but I cannot see
how they might inform or relate to Sybil and Madame Bovary, nor to any
adulterous encounters as we find in ADA or in KQK's
"hirondelle-swallow" ( these are the only ones I remember
now).
Emma and Léon's drive in a "hackney cab" ( was this
the "Hirondelle"?) takes up two memorable pages of Nabokov's
Lectures on Literature on Flaubert and Madame Bovary, close to
his references to the opera Lucia de Lammermoor and to the Rouen
Cathedral.
In
ADA, Van stays at a cheap hotel named Lammermoor before one of his meetings
with Ada.
Also at the begining of the novel there is a reference to Flaubert,
opera and buggy:
"Van reached the third lawn, and the bower, and carefully inspected
the stage prepared for the scene, ‘like a provincial come an hour too early to
the opera after jogging all day along harvest roads with poppies and bluets
catching and twinkle-twining in the wheels of his buggy’ (Floeberg’s
Ursula).[ DB's note do page 103: Floeberg: Flaubert’s style is mimicked in this pseudo
quotation.]
In
KQK we find the "swallow" ( hirondelle) that shines when Martha
meets her future lover and, much later, during the boating trip associated to
her plans to murder her husband : " The lady wore a
black suit and a diminutive black had with a little diamond swallow"..."the
light in the window had dimmed, but in compensation the reflection of Martha's
little bright swallow had appeared in it"..."to flatten his oars over the water,
swallow-like on the backstroke..."