The action of the work is freely transferred from the 19th century ("Sorochinskaya Fair") to the 17th ("Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupal"), and then to the 18th ("May Night, or Drowned Woman," "Missing Letter," "The Night Before Christmas") and again in the 17th ("Terrible Revenge"), and again in the 19th ("Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his aunt"). Both books are ringed by the stories of the grandfather of the clerk Thomas Grigorievich - a dashing Cossack, who seems to connect the past and the present, past and nothingness with his life. The passage of time is not torn on the pages of the work, staying in a certain spiritual and historical unity.