d. Vladimir in fiction. Sollogub V.A. Tarantas

Poor Ivan Vasilyevich went to inspect the city without leadership and was unwittingly amazed by his deep ignorance. How did they live here? What was going on here? - Who can tell you now? Ivan Vasilyevich examined the Golden Gate with white walls and a green lid, stood at them, looked at them, then again stood and looked and went to the church, first to Dmitrievskaya, where he marveled at inexplicable hieroglyphs, then to the cathedral, prayed fervently, bowed to the ashes of the princes ... but the graves remained closed and mute for him.

He left the cathedral with a heavy thought, with a heavy doubt. People crowded in the square, gentlemen in round hats, ladies with umbrellas walked around; in the living yard, filled with haberdashery, screaming inmates clinged to passers-by; officials with feathers behind their ears peeked out of the huge building of the present places; in each window there were two, three officials, and Ivan Vasilyevich thought that they were all teasing him ...

He understood then, or began to understand, that what had been done was done, that it could not be remade by any force; he understood that our antiquity did not fit in a book, was not sold for two hryvnia, but must be acquired by the unceasing study of a whole life. It can't be otherwise.

Where there are few traces and monuments, especially where mores change and cut history into two halves, the past does not constitute popular memories, but only a mystery to scientists. Such a sad truth...