4 December 1898 was a sad day for the whole of Russia, not least for its cultural and intellectual circles: Pavel Tretyakov died at ten o'clock that morning. Reactions to the news brought grief not only from his family, but also from many Russian people. An endless flow of condolences, flowers and wreaths arrived at the Tretyakov house. When the funeral was over, the time came for the reading of the will of the deceased. But it turned out that brought up unexpected complications, as Yevdokia Konstantinovna Dmitrieva, Pavel Tretyakov's niece, recalled: "First, it took a long time to find the will! And when it was found at last, stuck under one of the drawers in the writing desk, and handed over to a most respected Moscow solicitor, Mikhail Petrovich Minin, he, almost at once, found a major mistake in its text ... It made it not only impossible for the Moscow district court to legalize the document, but practically declared it invalid. The family were shocked!”
