Prologue

"The Stationmaster" opens with the narrator, A.G.N., frustrated with the stationmaster as he travels on his journey. In early nineteenth-century Russia travelers used horses provided by poststations to go from one town to another, along postroads. The stationmaster was responsible for the administration of road permits (required of all travelers) and the horses travelers would use.

The narrator becomes more sympathetic, insisting that the stationmaster is "a veritable martyr of the fourteenth class." This alludes to the institution known as the Table of Ranks, which, in Czarist Russia, established an order of social ranking among all government workers, including the military. The fourteenth class was the lowest of the ranks in the Table. The narrator appeals to his "reader's conscience" by offering examples of situations in which a stationmaster is a victim of circumstances, subject to verbal and physical abuse.

Part II

The narrator discusses...