Vladimir Nabokov. Solus Rex
Vladimir Nabokov. SOLUS REX
The king set out in search of breakfast. He never knew in which of the five possible chambers situated along the cold stone gallery, with cobwebs in the corners of its ogival windows, his coffee would be wait ing. Opening the doors one by one, he kept trying to locate the little set table, and finally found it where it happened least frequently: under a large, opulently dark portrait of his predecessor. King Gafon was por trayed at the age at which he remembered him, but features, posture, and bodily structure were endowed with a magnificence that had never been characteristic of that stoop-shouldered, fidgety, and sloppy old man with a