“Recently, when starting a major renovation of my grandfather’s old St. Petersburg apartment, I found a briefcase with yellowed papers stored behind a false wall. Among them were notes from my great-great-grandfather and namesake Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov. My ancestor did not write for the public, he simply outlined for memory the facts of his biography, which turned out to be absolutely amazing. The incident discussed in this story took place in Andrei Timofeevich’s early youth, in 1882. He wrote it down in adulthood, when the publication of these facts would no longer have consequences for its participants. And yet, it became possible to make these events widely public only now, when they died down and went into the past nineteenth and twentieth centuries, empires rose and collapsed , and the deadly secrets of our ancestors turned into entertaining stories. I, in accordance with my modest talent, shifted this episode of Andrei Timofeevich’s life into a modern way and decided to offer it to the attention of respected readers...”