“...Oh my God! How many changes have happened before my eyes! The beauties have turned ugly, the cheerful women have become sad; in the hands that previously so sweetly played with a fan and lightly waltzed the happy Zephyrs, I now see rosaries or cards; the gazes with which all others once met now wander alone through the hall filled with inattentive people. Many smart people turned into fools, honest people into slackers, scoundrels into proud people, saints into freethinkers and freethinkers into saints. In a word, I, an old ephemeral, noticed metamorphoses in life that are worth Ovid's; I saw everything, except for rogues to become honest, and fools to become smart...” The work is given in the pre-reform alphabet.