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No one in the whole wide world was more miserable than Anisii Tulipov. Well, perhaps someone somewhere in darkest Africa or Patagonia, but certainly not anywhere nearer than that.

Judge for yourself. In the first place, that forename - Anisii. Have you ever heard of a nobleman, a gentleman of the bedchamber, say, or at the very least, the head of some official department, being called Anisii? It simply reeks of icon-lamps and priests' offspring with their hair slicked with nettle oil.

And that surname, from the word 'tulip'! It was simply a joke. He had inherited the ill-starred family title from his great-grandfather. When Anisii's forebear had been studying in the seminary, the father rector had had the bright idea of replacing the inharmonious surnames of the future servants of the Church with names more pleasing to God. For the sake of simplicity and convenience, one year he had named all the seminarians after Church holidays, another year after fruits, and great-grandfather had found himself in the year of the flowers: someone had become Hyacinthov, someone Balzamov and someone else Buttercupov. Great-grandfather never did graduate from the seminary, but he had passed the idiotic surname on to his progeny. Well, at least he had been named after a tulip and not a dandelion.

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