"In this position and standing all in our places, we all spent that beautiful, bright and quiet summer morning. Finally, at 12 o'clock, the thunder of cannon fire outside the city announced to us that the empress was approaching the city. In a moment, everything was all, and all the people were established in order, in their places and everything, with inexplicable lust, they began to wait for her arrival and with their eyes searched in the distance for her carriage, which was riding behind many others who had galloped past us in front. Finally, she appeared, surrounded by many horsemen galloping on both sides of it, the governor himself galloped along the side of this carriage, on horseback, and did not manage to catch up with it. us, like all of us, gave her our deepest bow.
and we, with so much impatience, deprived us of the expected pleasure of seeing her, for instead of her stopping in front of us, as we had all expected, she galloped past us so quickly that we, raising our heads, saw her carriage already moving far away from us, and only looked after it.
"Equally well, all our mistresses, the boyars, were deceived in their flattering expectations when they entered the cathedral, for even there the empresses did not want to get out of the carriage. But she, stopping for a second in front of the open doors to the cathedral, crossed herself only in front of the cross brought out to her by the archimandrite, and ordered to immediately continue her journey further to the palace. And so all the way there Waiting for the lady, who had never seen the empress even before her eyes, were forced to go back to their houses and apartments without any thought and with sensitive displeasure... Everyone at least comforted themselves with the hope that they would see the empress in the performance that was being prepared for the theater that day...
“This universal wish has finally come true: the Empress, indeed, has honored him with her consecration, and before the evening, all the nobility had gathered in the theater and filled the box with themselves in the most natural way, as the Empress also arrived, accompanied by the governor and the other gentlemen and mistresses of her retinue. A minute When she entered, I will say, she was delightful for everyone. Everyone’s eyes were turned to her, and the empress did not have time to show herself.
How. with the music suddenly thundering, everyone stood up, bowed to her in the deepest way, and were honored with a corresponding bow from her. From that moment on, all eyes were turned to her throughout the play that was being presented at that time, which hardly a tenth of the people then saw.
“At the end of the performance, the empress went back to the palace, and we all, upon leaving the theater, followed her, to watch the illuminations and the serenade in full view of the palace, and spent the rest of the evening quite cheerfully; for there was indeed a lot of worthy sights; especially admired I was surrounded by a countless number of bowls with which all the walls of the ancient Tula fortress and its towers were illuminated. Towards the last day, for the occasion of the Empress, there were towers with pinnacles on top, which exist to this day (written in 1810), and all of them were installed with a multitude of bowls, and The entire assembly, with rows of wire with turpentine placed along all the teeth below them, was lit in an instant and presented a beautiful display. And the serenade of that time gave the same spiritual pleasure to all the spectators - the quiet delightful harmony of brass and vocal music delighted everyone’s ears.
In the evening, the Tula nobility gave a ball; they expected that the empress “would not only honor her with her presence, but would also stay there the whole evening.” Bolotov, along with everyone else, went there, hoping that he might hear something there about the fate of his book. "We
They found the entire huge hall of the noble assembly, already filled with people and filled with an almost countless number of gentlemen and mistresses, all of them with extreme impatience and lust waiting for the moment at which the empress would arrive. And we didn’t have time to look around much, when suddenly everyone started talking: “Go, go.” And before the word could spread everywhere, in an instant there was a terrible bustle and excitement among everyone... Everyone wanted to stand in front and take the best place, and everyone was almost out of breath, as they had already heard entry into dreams.