Хождение по мукам. Трилогия

A detached observer from some provincial alley overgrown with lindens, getting into St. Petersburg, experienced in moments of attention a complex feeling of mental excitement and spiritual oppression.

Wandering along the straight and foggy streets, past gloomy houses with dark windows, with slumbering janitors at the gates, looking for a long time at the deep and gloomy expanse of the Neva, at the bluish lines of bridges with lanterns lit before dark, with colonnades of uncomfortable and joyless palaces , with the non-Russian, piercing height of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, with poor boats diving in dark water, with countless barges of damp firewood along granite embankments, looking into the faces of passers-by - preoccupied and pale, with eyes like city murk - seeing and listening to all this, an outside observer - a well-intentioned one - hid his head deeper in his collar, and an unintentional one began to think that it would be good to hit with all his strength, to smash this frozen charm to smithereens.