Eccentrics

"Stepanida Ivanovna lived with her husband for thirty-four years—he was once a handsome military officer, the favorite of superiors, and a companion to associates and women; at cards he lost three estates; he was famous for his love affairs and not-love affairs—and, above all, for marrying Stepaniда Ivanovna.

…And now, free, she was thinking about a plan that would put Alexey Alexeyevich’s name into the pages of history.

But to carry out this extraordinary plan, a great deal of money was needed. The state of the Braga family had been badly spent; the Gnilopyaty brought only about five thousand in income—so, together with the pension, it was only barely enough to live.

Stepanida Ivanovna decided to look for a treasure.

Along the banks of the Dnipro, in the bluffs washed away by spring floods, on the islands, rich treasures appeared from time to time: they were buried long ago—by both Varangians and Zaporozhian Cossacks, and the Haidamaks, and Polish lords, and the Bulavynites—everyone who had passed along the Dnipro’s shores. Stories about these treasures Stepaniда Ivanovna heard from the nuns of the neighboring monastery near Gnilopyaty. The nuns didn’t really know much, but one day one of them told her that recently the abbess had come up with a treasure plan of the Ukrainian hetman Mazepa, gathered for installing him on the throne of Little Russia and abandoned during his flight with the Swedish king."