Two young people – lieutenant Pirogov and artist Piskarev – are hustling in the evening for single women walking along Nevsky Prospekt. The artist follows the brunette, cherishing the most romantic love for her. They reach Liteiny and, rising to the top floor of a brightly lit four-story house, find themselves in a room where there are three other women, by the looks of which Piskarev with horror realizes that he was in a brothel. The heavenly appearance of his chosen one does not correlate in his mind either with this place, or with her stupid and vulgar conversation. Piskaryov runs out into the street in despair. Arriving home, he could not calm down for a long time, but he dozed off as a footman knocked on the door in a rich livery and said that the lady he had just had sent a coach for him and asked to be at her house immediately. Struck Piskarev brought to the ball, where among the dancing ladies all are more beautiful than his chosen one. They start talking, but she
is being carried away somewhere, Piskarev searches her in vain for the rooms and… wakes up at home. It was a dream! From now on, he loses peace, wanting to see her even in a dream. Opium allows him to find the beloved in his dreams. One day, his workshop appears to him, he is with a palette in his hands and she, his wife, is near. Why not? he thinks, waking up. He will find her and marry her! Piskarev hardly finds the right house, and – oh, a miracle! – it is she who opens the door to him and cute reports that, despite two o’clock in the afternoon, she only woke up, because she was only drunk at seven in the morning. Piskarev tells a seventeen-year-old beauty about the abyss of debauchery in which she is immersed, paints pictures of a happy family life with him, but she refuses with contempt, she laughs at him! Piskarev rushes out, somewhere wanders, and when he returns home, he locks himself in the room. A week later, breaking the door, find him with a razor-cut throat. They bury the poor man at the Okhta cemetery, and even his friend Pirogov is not at the funeral, since the lieutenant himself,
in turn, fell into the story. Small is not a blunder, he, pursuing his blonde, gets into the apartment of a certain tinsmith Schiller, who at this moment, being very drunk, asks a drunken shoemaker Hoffman to cut off his nose with a shoe knife. The Pirogov, who interfered with them in this, ran into rudeness and retired. But only to return to the morning, to continue his love affair with a blonde who turned out to be the wife of Schiller. He orders the tinsmith to make himself spurs and, taking advantage of the incident, continues the siege, arousing, however, jealousy in her husband. On Sunday, when Schiller is not at home, Pirogov is to his wife, dances with her, kisses her, and just at this moment is Schiller with friend Hoffmann and the carpenter Kunz, also, by the way, a German. Drunk disgruntled artisans grab the lieutenant Pirogov by the arms and legs and create something so rude and impolite above him that the author does not find the words to describe this action. Only the draft manuscript of Gogol, not missed in this place by censorship, allows us to interrupt our guesses and find out that Pirogov was hewn! In a frenzy the lieutenant flies out of the house, promising the tin whip and Siberia, at least. However, on the way, going to the confectioner’s shop, having eaten a couple of pies and reading the newspaper, Pirogov became cool, and having distinguished himself in the evening at friends in the mazurka, he calmed down completely. Such a strange, incomprehensible incident. However, on Nevsky Prospekt, under a deceptive,
