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"O! russian land!"

The Lay of the Host of Igor

A stranger of a thoughtful turn of mind, newly arrived in Petersburg from the leafy side streets of some suburban resort, would have experienced complex sensations of mental excitement and spiritual oppression.

Wandering along the straight, misty streets, past bleak unlighted houses, each with a drowsing porter at the gate; resting his gaze on the full, sombre expanse of the Neva, on the bluish lines of bridges, lit up some time before dark, and flanked by grim cheerless palaces with pillared facades; looking up at the Peter-Paul cathedral, so un-Russian in its dizzying height, and down at the shabby boats, their prows constantly plunging into the dark water, and the innumerable barges laden with damp logs, ranged along the granite quays; peering into the faces of the passers-by, faces pale and careworn, with eyes as sombre as the city itself — the stranger, would, if well-disposed, have merely huddled deeper into his coat-collar, or, if disaffected, have told himself that it wouldn't be a bad idea to deliver a crashing blow, and shatter all this petrified magic into smithereens.

As far back as the time of Peter the Great, a sexton from the Church of the Trinity, not far from the Trinity Bridge, where it stands to this day, was alarmed, while descending the belfry steps in the dusk, by the apparition of a haggard wench with uncovered head, and rushed to a tavern, where he shouted out:

"Petersburg is doomed!", for which he was seized, questioned under torture in the Secret Chancellery, and ruthlessly knouted.

The persistent rumours that there was something uncanny about Petersburg may have dated from this time.

Some there were who claimed to have seen with their own eyes the devil driving along the streets of Vasilyevsky Island in a droshky.

Others had seen the bronze emperor leap from his granite pedestal at midnight, and gallop over the paving stones in a storm at high tide.

And a corpse — that of an official — was said to have pressed its face against the window of a privy councillor's carriage.

Many such tales were current in the town.

And quite recently the poet Alexei Alexeyevich Bessonov, crossing a humpbacked bridge on his way to the Islands in a swift, rubber-tired droshky, and gazing through tears at a star visible through a rift in the clouds, told himself that the droshky, and the string of lamps on the bridge and the whole of sleeping Petersburg behind him, were but a dream, a chimera, a figment of his brain, sodden with drink, love-making and boredom.

Two centuries passed like a dream: Petersburg, perched on the edge of the world, amidst swamps and wastelands, dreamed of infinite glory, boundless power. Palace coups d'etat, regicides, triumphal entries, and bloody executions, flitted by like hallucinations. Weak-minded women enjoyed an almost divine authority; the fate of nations was decided on tumbled love couches; strapping youths with earth-stained hands appeared upon the scene, and boldly ascended the steps of the throne, to share power, couch, and Byzantine luxury.