Endnotes + 

Blind Alley would be the nearest English equivalent. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

Wife-of-a-regiment. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

A great Russian general and a universal military genius and strategist. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

“Spindle-Shanks! Spindle-Shanks!” —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

“Horse-collar.” —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

“Lenten.” —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

“Made out of matting.” —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

The reference here is to a famous folktale⁠—best known in Pushkin’s version, “The Little Gold Fish.” A fisherman, having caught a little gold fish, is promised the fulfillment of all his wishes for its release. All his demands, instigated by his wife, are granted, beginning with a substitution of a new trough for a broken one, and up to the attainment of rank and wealth; but finally the wife insists upon the fulfillment of a wish so insolent that, upon his return from interviewing his benefactress, the fisherman finds his wife sitting at the same old broken trough, before his former humble hut. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

A verst is about two-thirds of a mile. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

Three horses, harnessed abreast. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

Abrotanum; southern wood. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

Holy Lake. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

In midsummer. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

In English in the original. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ + 

I.e. There was no family name. The name is Polish, not Russian. ↩ + 