- Mademoiselle returned to Switzerland, and corresponded with the family for a bit after that.
- Later, after World War One and the Revolution, (the one from Chapter Three, in which Vladimir lost his inheritance from Uncle Ruka), Vladimir goes to Lausanne, Switzerland with a college friend and looks her up.
- She is the same, only more so: fatter and more hard of hearing.
- Mademoiselle lives with Vladimir's mother's old governess, even though they never spoke when they lived under the same roof.
- The two old women speak of their time in Russia very fondly, with great nostalgia.
- Nabokov is confused by this, but explains it this way: "One is always at home in one's past…" (5.7.2)
- The next day, Vladimir brings Mademoiselle a gift she could not otherwise afford, and then goes for a walk alone along the water. There he sees "an aged swan, a large, uncouth, dodo-like creature, making ridiculous efforts to hoist himself into a moored boat." (5.7.4) It is the picture of misery.
- It is this image he first thinks of upon learning of Mademoiselle's death years later. He thinks of Mademoiselle and worries that her miseries made her life more difficult than it should have been.
- Nabokov tells us: when he first wrote the story of Mademoiselle, and published it in the first version of the book, a cousin lets him know that his own childhood nanny was still alive. He finds out, too, that his father's sisters' nanny is alive as well. Their long lives make him feel closer to the warmth of his past.