Once an evil inventor created a mirror, "in which everything that was kind and good disappeared, and everything that was bad and obscene was reflected and seemed even worse". The students of the evil professor did a lot of evil with the mirror and finally tried to get it up to heaven, but the mirror fell and shattered into millions of tiny pieces. The person in whose eye fell a piece of the mirror began to see in everything foolishness, and life for him became unbearable. This is what happened to Pavel Ivanovich, so now his life is changing drastically.