Vladimir Nabokov. Aureliana
2
He had spent all his life in Berlin and its suburbs; had never traveled farther than Peacock Island on a neighboring lake. He was a first-class entomologist. Dr. Rebel, of Vienna, had named a certain rare moth Agrotis pilgrami; and Pilgram himself had published several descrip tions. His boxes contained most of the countries of the world, but all he had ever seen of it was the dull sand-and-pine scenery of an occa sional Sunday trip; and he would be reminded of captures that had seemed to him so miraculous in his boyhood as he melancholically gazed at the familiar fauna about him, limited by a familiar landscape, to which it corresponded as hopelessly as he t