“Fifteen versts from the district town, on an elevated place, stands a two-story count's house with a magnificent garden, surrounded by a stone wall. Nearby, in a meadow near the river, is the village of Pogorelovo with a beautiful church, built by the ancestors of the present owner, who rest in a crypt under the altar. To the side of Pogorelov, near the forest, a distillery rises, spewing out a mass of smoke, majestically rising to the sky...”