Over there, the constable was galloping like mad from the governor’s house to the doctor, and everyone knew that Her Excellency was about to give birth, although in the opinion of the gossips and old ladies it was not nice to anticipate such events. Everyone would be asking “Is it a boy or a girl?” Young ladies would be preparing their Sunday-best caps. Over here, Matvei Matveich would be stepping out with a stout stick sometime between five and six, and everyone knew that it was for his evening constitutional, just as everyone knew that in any case he was suffering from indigestion and would stop by at the old councillor’s who, as everyone also knew, would be drinking tea at that time. You couldn’t pass anyone in the street without a bow and exchanging a word or two, and even if there was someone you didn’t stop to greet, you knew who he was, where he was going and why, and it was clear from the look in his eye that he too knew equally well who you were, where you were going and why. And even when people who didn’t know each other and had never seen each other before passed on the street, they would stop and turn around a couple of times, so that when they got home they could describe the clothes and gait of this stranger, and everyone would start speculating and trying to guess who he was, where he was from and what he was doing. But here it took only a look to make someone move out of the way, as if everyone else was an enemy.

To start with, Alexander would stare with typical provincial curiosity at every passing stranger and every respectably dressed person, thinking that they must all be some minister or ambassador, or perhaps a writer: “Could he be so-and-so?” he thought. “Or perhaps that other one?” But soon the novelty wore off – since he seemed to be running into ministers, writers or ambassadors at every step.

When he looked at the houses, that was even drearier, and he was oppressed by those monotonous stone piles which, like colossal mausoleums, seemed to form a single unending, uninterrupted mass. “I’m almost at the end of the street now,” he thought, “and then there’ll be some relief for my eyes,” he thought, “at least a hill, some greenery or a broken-down fence.” But no, once again he was confronted with the same stone façade of identical houses with four rows of windows. That street too came to an end, but only to be replaced by a further series of identical houses. Whether you looked right or left, your way was barred by house after house after house, pile of stone after pile of stone, each one the same as the one before… no empty space anywhere to give your eyes a rest; you were blocked on every side – and you felt that people’s thoughts and feelings were similarly limited and confined.

Such were the first grim impressions of the provincial in St Petersburg. It was all so bewildering and depressing. No one paid him any attention: he simply felt lost here. There was no novelty, no variety of any kind to distract or entertain him, not even the crowds. His provincial parochialism declared war on everything he saw when he compared it with what he saw at home. He was lost in thought, and started imagining that he was back in his home town. What a delight it was to see! One house with a gabled roof and a little front garden with acacias. On the roof a dovecote had been built; the merchant Izyumin was a pigeon fancier and liked to race them, and that’s why he went and built that pigeon loft on the roof. Morning and evening you would find him up there on the roof in his nightcap and dressing gown, whistling and waving a stick with a rag tied on the end. Another house was lit up like a torch; windows practically filled the four sides of the house, which had a flat roof and had been built long ago; you had the feeling that at any moment the house would collapse or set fire to itself; the colour of its timbers had faded to a light grey.

You would be afraid to live in that house, but people actually lived there. At times, it is true, the owner would look at the sagging ceiling, shake his head and mutter: “Will it last until the spring?” followed by: “Well, let’s hope so!” He continued living there, not so much afraid for himself, but rather for his pocket. Next door was the eccentric house of the doctor, painted a rakish red and extending in a semicircle with two wings built like sentry boxes – and all hidden behind greenery was another house. The back of the house gave onto the street and was protected by a fence which stretched for two versts. Through the fence you could see red apples peeping out – a temptation for the small boys. The houses all kept a respectable distance from the churches, which were surrounded by thick grass and tombstones. As for office buildings, you could see that they were – well, office buildings, and no one went near them unless they really needed to, while here, in the capital, they looked no different from the buildings where people lived – and, what is worse, there were houses with shops inside them – what a disgrace! If you were walking in our town, after just two or three streets, you would begin to smell fresh air and find wattle fences, and behind them kitchen gardens, and then even an open field where spring crops were growing. Here you would find quiet and stillness – and yes, tedium; both in the street and among the people – that blissful inactivity! Everyone lives as they please, and there are no crowds; even the chickens wander freely through the streets; goats and cattle nibble the grass, and the little ones fly kites. But being here – it makes him so homesick! And this provincial sighs for the fence outside his window, for that dusty, dirty road, that wobbly bridge, the sign outside the inn. It pains him to see that St Isaac’s Cathedral is superior to the one in his home town, and that the hall of the Assembly of the Nobility is bigger than the one back home. When faced by such comparisons, he maintains a resentful silence, although sometimes he dares to say that a piece of such and such cloth, or a certain kind of wine can be had where he comes from at a lower price and of better quality, and that, where he comes from, people wouldn’t even look at delicacies from overseas like big crabs or shells, and that you can buy all these fabrics and knick-knacks from foreigners if you want, as long as you don’t mind being fleeced by them and are content to be taken in! But how suddenly he cheers up when he compares caviar, pears and a certain kind of bread and observes that they are all better in his home town!

“You mean that’s what you call a pear?” he would say. “Where I come from even the servants wouldn’t touch them!”

The provincial feels even worse when he enters one of these houses bearing a letter from back home.