Lieutenant General
Actual State Councillor
Major General
State Councillor
Collegiate Councillor
Colonel
Court Councillor
Lieutenant Colonel
Collegiate Assessor
Major (or Captain)
Titular Councillor
Staff Captain
Collegiate Secretary
Lieutenant
Secretary of Naval Constructions
Government Secretary
Second Lieutenant
Provincial Secretary
Collegiate Registrar
The rank of titular councillor conferred personal nobility; the rank of actual state councillor made it hereditary.
UKRAINIAN TALES
St. John's Eve
A True Story Told by the Beadle of the - Church
Foma Grigorievich WAS known to have this special sort of quirk: he mortally disliked telling the same thing over again. It sometimes happened, if you talked him into telling something a second time, that you'd look and he'd throw in some new thing or change it so it was unrecognizable. Once one of those gentlemen-it's hard for us simple folk to fit a name to them: writers, no, not writers, but the same as the dealers at our fairs: they snatch, they cajole, they steal all sorts of stuff, and then bring out booklets no thicker than a primer every month or week-one of those gentlemen coaxed this same story out of Foma Grigorievich, who then forgot all about it. Only there comes this same young sir from Poltava in a pea-green caftan, whom I've already mentioned and one of whose stories I think you've already read, toting a little book with him, and opening it in the middle, he shows it to us. Foma Grigorievich was just about to saddle his nose with his spectacles, but remembering that he'd forgotten to bind them with thread and stick it down with wax, he handed the book to me. Having a smattering of letters and not needing spectacles, I began to read. Before I had time to turn two pages, he suddenly grabbed my arm and stopped me.
"Wait! first tell me, what's that you're reading?"
I confess, I was a bit taken aback by such a question. "What's this I'm reading, Foma Grigorievich? Why, your true story, your very own words."
"Who told you those are my words?"
"What better proof, it's printed here: told by the beadle So-and- so."
"Spit on the head of the one who printed it! He's lying, the dad-blasted Muscovite! Did I say that? The devil it's the same! He's got a screw loose! Listen, I'll tell it to you now."
We moved closer to the table and he began.
My grandfather (God rest his soul! and may he eat nothing in that world but white rolls and poppyseed cakes with honey!) was a wonderful storyteller. Once he began to talk, you wouldn't budge from your place the whole day for listening. No comparison with some present-day babbler, who starts spouting off, and in such language as if he hadn't had anything to eat for three days- you just grab your hat and run. I remember like now-the old woman, my late mother, was still alive-how on a long winter's evening, when there was a biting frost outside that walled us up solidly behind the narrow window of our cottage, she used to sit by the comb, pulling the long thread out with her hand, rocking the cradle with her foot, and humming a song that I can hear as if it was now. An oil lamp, trembling and flickering as if frightened of something, lighted our cottage. The spindle whirred; and all of us children, clustered together, listened to our grandfather, who was so old he hadn't left the stove 1 in five years. But his wondrous talk about olden times, about Cossack raids, about the Polacks, about the mighty deeds of Podkova, Poltora Kozhukha, and Sagai-dachny, 2 never interested us as much as his stories about some strange marvel of old, which sent shivers all through us and made our hair stand on end. Now and then fear would take such hold of you that everything in the evening appeared like God knows what monster. If you happened to step out of the cottage at night for something, you'd think a visitor from the other world had gone to lie down in your bed. And may I never tell this story another time if I didn't often mistake my own blouse, from a distance, for a curled-up devil at the head of the bed. But the main thing in my grandfather's stories was that he never in his life told a lie, and whatever he used to say, that was precisely what had happened. I'll tell one of his wonderful stories for you now. I know there are lots of those smart alecks who do some scribbling in the courts and even read civic writings, and who, if they were handed a simple prayer book, wouldn't be able to make out a jot of it-but display their teeth shamefully, that they can do. For them, whatever you say is funny. Such disbelief has spread through the world! What's more-may God and the most pure Virgin not love me!-maybe even you won't believe me: once I made mention of witches, and what do you think? some daredevil turned up who didn't believe in witches! Yes, thank God, I've lived so long in the world, I've seen such infidels as find giving a priest a ride in a sieve 3 easier than taking snuff is for the likes of us; and they, too, go in fear of witches. But if they were to dream… only I don't want to say what, there's no point talking about them.
Way, way back, more than a hundred years ago-my late grandfather used to say-no one would even have recognized our village: a farmstead, the poorest of farmsteads! Some dozen huts, cobless, roofless, stuck up here and there in the middle of a field. Not a fence, not a decent barn to put cattle or a cart in. It was the rich ones that lived like that; and if you looked at our sort, the poor ones-a hole in the ground, there's your house! Only by the smoke could you tell that a creature of God lived there. You may ask, why did they live like that? It wasn't really poverty, because almost everybody then went Cossacking and got no small amount of goods in other lands; but more because there was no need to have a decent cottage. What folk weren't hanging about then: Crimeans, Polacks, Litvaks! 4 It also happened that bunches of our own would come and rob their own. Everything happened.