And 15 years before the horror came roaring out of Berlin that resulted in the crushing of Paris (below), a young Russian emigre living there on the proceeds of tennis lessons and translations wrote, "And do you know with what a marvelous clatter the brightly lit train, all its windows laughing, sweeps across the bridge above the street! Probably it goes no farther than the suburbs, but in that instant the darkness beneath the black span of the bridge is filled with such mighty metallic music that I cannot help imagining the sunny lands toward which I shall depart as soon as I have procured those extra hundred marks for which I long so blandly, so light-heartedly."
Vladimir Nabokov, A Letter That Never Reached Russia (1925)
