 THE DIARY OF A MADMAN AND OTHER STORIES by Nikolai Gogol read by Nicholas Bolton for Naxos audiobooks Petersburg Tales Nefsky Prospect There is nothing finer than Nefsky Prospect, not in Petersburg, anyway. It is the making of the city. What splendour does it lack, that fairest of our city thoroughfares? I know that no one among the poor clerks that live there would exchange Nefsky Prospect for all the blessings of the world. Not only the young man of twenty-five summers with a fine moustache and a splendidly cut coat, but even the veteran with white hairs sprouting on his chin and a head as smooth as a silver dish is enthusiastic over Nefsky Prospect. And the ladies. Nefsky Prospect is even more attractive to the ladies, and indeed to whom is it not attractive? As soon as you step into Nefsky Prospect you are in an atmosphere of gaiety. Though you may have some necessary and urgent work to do, yet as soon as you are there you forget all about business. This is the one place where people put in an appearance without necessity, without being driven there by the needs and commercial interests that swallow up all Petersburg. A man met on Nefsky Prospect seems less of an egoist than on Morskaya, Gorchovaya, Lityeinaya, Mishchanskaya and other streets, where covetousness, self-interest and need are apparent in all those walking by or flying past in carriages and droshkies. Nefsky Prospect is the general channel of communication in Petersburg. The man who lives on the Petersburg, or Vyborgside, who hasn't seen his friend at Piesky or at the Moscow Gate for years, may reckon with certainty on meeting him in Nefsky Prospect. No directory list at an address inquiry office gives such accurate information as Nefsky Prospect. All-powerful Nefsky Prospect sold place of entertainment for the poor man in Petersburg. How cleanly swept are its pavements, and my God, how many feet leave their traces on it. The clumsy, dirty boots of the discharged soldier, under whose weight the very granite seems to crack, and the miniature, ethereal little shoes of the young lady, who turns her head towards the glittering shop windows as the sunflower to the sun, and the clanking sabre of the hopeful lieutenant which marks a sharp scratch along it. All print the scars of strength or weakness on it. What rapid transformation scenes pass over it in a single day? What changes it goes through between one dawn and the next?