In April, Pushkin proposed to Natalia Goncharova for a second time, and it was accepted. On May 6 the engagement took place. In May he came to the Goncharov estate of Polotnyany Zavod and spent several days there with his fiancée.
In Moscow, at the English Club, people said that a new illness had appeared, called cholera: nausea, vomiting, dizziness, always a severe stomach upset, cramps—and within a few hours a person dies. Soon the rumors were confirmed: notices were delivered to everyone, instructing that those sick with cholera were not to be kept in private homes but sent immediately to hospitals, and that, to purify the air, tar and chlorine were to be placed on small saucers in every room.
The death toll grows heavier with each passing day. Wagons ride through the streets, collecting bodies. Along with the sick, they sometimes seize the drunk as well. In almost every house the gates have been shut; people are afraid to walk the streets, go out only in extreme cases, and everyone fears letting anyone into the home. The whole city seems to have scattered or died out. Incoming letters are held back and disinfected. The city is cordoned off; carts with the dying and the dead stretch along the streets; in courtyards, manure and juniper are smoldering. At the outposts on the roads into the city, bonfires have been laid—those who enter are fumigated.
September 29 — Nicholas I will come to Moscow at the height of the cholera epidemic. The tsar’s first words to the governor-general Dmitry Golitsyn will be: “I hope, Prince, that everyone in Moscow is as healthy as you are?” Then the sovereign will go to the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God to pray, kneeling.