When departing from Petersburg, I thought the road would be top quality. All who traveled on it following the sovereign thought so.5 And so it truly was, but only for a short spell. In dry weather, the dirt scattered on the road gave it a smooth surface; once soaked by the rains, it produced heaps of mud in the summer that made the road impassable…. Bothered by the bad road, I quit my carriage and entered the postal cabin with the intention of resting. In the cabin, I found a traveler who, seated at the usual sort of long rustic table in the front corner, was sorting papers and asking the postmaster to order that his horses be provided as soon as possible. In response to my question as to who he was, I learned he was solicitor of the old school, heading to Petersburg with a mass of tattered papers that he was reviewing at that moment. I entered unhesitatingly into conversation with him, and this is the talk we had: “Kind Sir! I, your most humble servant, was a registrar in the Service Archive6 and had occasion to use my position for my own advantage. To the best of my modest ability, I compiled genealogies of many Russian lineages, based on clear deductions. I can prove their princely or noble lineage for several hundreds of years. I can restore practically any person’s princely standing, having traced his origin from Vladimir Monomakh or Rurik himself.7 Kind Sir!,” he continued, pointing to his papers, “the entire nobility of Great Russia ought to purchase my work, and pay for it sums not paid for any merchandise. But if your Excellency, your Honor, or Most Honorable—I do not know what your honorific is—will allow, these people do not know what they need. You are aware just how much the pious Tsar Fyodor Alexeyevich of blessed memory offended the Russian nobility when he abolished mestnichestvo. This strict law placed many distinguished princely and royal clans on equal footing with the nobility of Novgorod.8 But then our pious ruler, the Emperor Peter the Great, brought about their total eclipse with his Table of Ranks.9 He opened the path for everyone to the acquisition of a noble title through military and civil service and trampled in the dirt, so to speak, the ancestral nobility. Our Reigning Most Gracious Mother, ruling most kindly, confirmed these earlier ordinances with a supreme regulation on the nobility, that alarmed just about all our lineal nobles since ancient families were ranked lower than all the rest in the register of nobles.10 But a rumor is going round that soon an additional decree will be published and that those families whose noble origins can be proven for either two hundred or three hundred years will be awarded the title Marquess or some other eminence, and that they will enjoy before other families a certain distinction. For this reason, kind Sir, my work ought to be thoroughly agreeable to the entire ancestral nobility. But everyone has his detractors.
“In Moscow I found myself in the company of some young whippersnapper lordlings and offered them my work in order to recoup, thanks to their generous attention, the paper and ink I had wasted, if nothing else. But instead of a favorable reception I met with mockery and, having out of grief left behind this capital city, I embarked on the road to Piter11 where, as we know, there is much more enlightenment.” Having said this, he bowed deeply from the waist,12 drew himself up and stood before me in an attitude of great reverence. I understood his meaning, got … out of my wallet … and once I’d given that money to him, advised him that when he came to Petersburg he should sell his paper by the weight as wrapping to peddlers, since many would have their heads turned by the imaginary title of Marquess, and he would be the reason for the rebirth in Russia of an evil that had been abolished—bragging of an ancient pedigree.