I lived for almost forty years in a little home in Zamoskvorechye (district of Moscow). The fairly dilapidated residences of the so-called “Zamoskvorechye Empire” remain there, on the crooked side streets and alleys, to the present day. On the territory directly adjacent to the A. N. Ostrovsky park stood the house where I passed many years. This little corner of old Moscow was visible from its low-placed windows, exactly as it was seen by people in the 19th century. It was strange to watch how, in our day, envoys of another world swept along these very same dark side streets, which occasionally retained the names of former homeowners, in enormous, bright-colored buses, trolleys and streamlined limousines that sparkled with metal and lacquer.