With the death of Count Nikolay Petrovich Sheremetev, Dmitry Nikolayevich was left a complete orphan: the seven-year-old son of the former serf actress Praskovya Kovalyova-Zhemchugova, who had died soon after his birth

The boy's upbringing was taken in hand by the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, while as guardians of the young Sheremetev's person and of his fortune she appointed the State Secretary Dmitry Petrovich Troshchinsky and the Privy Councillor and Senator Mikhail Ivanovich Danaurov, whose family settled at Kuskovo.

The inheritance Sheremetev left was immense. The guardians managed the estates as best they could, and naturally fell upon the work of optimising and economising, in their own favour: some things were sold, others let, as, for example, the late count's beloved Kuskovo house, known as the House of Solitude.

The house was let for 500 roubles a month. First a merchant of the first guild took it, but moved out because of the damp; Bestuzhev replaced him for the summer, but moved out at the end of June; then the court actress Elizaveta Semyonovna Sandunova expressed a wish to move into a house steeped in legends and mysteries.

But the guardians refused Sandunova, because she had recently divorced her husband, and her living at Kuskovo might attract bad company and gossip. Can you imagine? The guardians of the son of a former serf actress refused to let a house to a divorced woman, so as not to disgrace the honour of the family name? The most amusing part is that Dmitry Sheremetev's nearest relation, his own aunt Varvara, was herself at the centre of a notorious divorce, and nothing came of it: she lived with it quite calmly and felt no shame before anyone.

There is no moral to this story; I am simply telling you what scoundrels people can be. As for Sandunova, she had no cause to regret the refusal: very soon the Sheremetev house would have brought her a meeting with the French, who plundered it to such a state that in the end the building had simply to be pulled down.