"
We turned up the side street to the Moika Canal, which lay like powdered
crystal under the moon. Not a soul was in sight.
There arrived then one of the most wonderful moments of my life. The
Nevski Prospect, that broad and mighty thoroughfare, stretched before us
like a great silver river. It was utterly triumphantly bare and naked.
Under the moon it flowed, with proud tranquillity, so far as the eye
could see between its high black banks of silent houses.
At intervals of about a hundred yards the Cossack pickets, like ebony
statues on their horses, guarded the way. Down the whole silver expanse
not one figure was to be seen; so beautiful was it under the high moon,
so still, so quiet, so proud, that it was revealing now for the first
time its real splendour. At no time of the night or day is the Nevski
deserted. How happy it must have been that night!...
For us, it was as though we hesitated on the banks of a river. I felt a
strange superstition, as though something said to me, "You cross that
and you are plunged irrevocably into a new order of events. Go home, and
you will avoid danger.
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