Vladimir Nabokov. Mademoiselle O : Клуб изучающих испанский языкVladimir Nabokov. Mademoiselle O
Vladimir Nabokov. MADEMOISELLE O
st homeland. Indeed, I found in the neighborhood quite a colony of such old Swiss governesses. Clustering together in a constant seething of competitive reminiscences, they formed a small island in an environ ment that had grown alien to them. Mademoiselle's bosom friend was now mummylike Mile. Golay, my mother's former governess, still prim and pessimistic at eighty-five; she had remained in our family long after my mother had married, and her return to Switzerland had preceded only by a couple of years that of Mademoiselle, with whom she had not been on speaking terms when both had been living under our roof. One is always at home in one's past, which partly explains those pathetic ladies'