Two young men - Lieutenant Pirogov and artist Piskarev - lap in the evening for single ladies walking on Nevsky Prospekt. The artist follows the brunette, cherishing at her expense the most romantic love. They reach Liteiny and, rising to the top floor of a brightly lit four-story building, find themselves in a room where there are three more women, by the look of which Piskarev with horror guesses that he was in a brothel. The heavenly appearance of his chosen one does not correlate in his mind with either this place or her stupid and vulgar conversation. Piskarev in despair runs out into the street.
Arriving home, he could not calm down for a long time, but only dozed off as a footman in a rich livery knocks on the door and says that the lady he had just sent sent a carriage for him and asked to be at her house immediately. The struck Piskarev is brought to the ball, where among the dancing ladies, his chosen one is more beautiful. They speak, but they drag her somewhere, Piskarev searches in vain for her in the rooms and ... wakes up at home. It was a dream!
From now on, he loses peace, wanting to see her at least in a dream. Opium allows him to find a lover in his dreams. Once, his workshop is presented to him, he is with a palette in his hands and she, his wife, are nearby. Why not? He thinks, waking up. He will find her and marry her! Piskarev hardly finds the right house, and - lo and behold! - It is she who opens the door to him and sweetly informs that, despite two o'clock in the afternoon, she only woke up, because she was brought here completely drunk only at seven in the morning. Piskarev tells the seventeen-year-old beauty about the abyss of debauchery in which she is immersed, paints pictures of a happy working family life with him, but she refuses with contempt, she laughs at him! Piskarev rushes out, wanders somewhere, and when he returns home, he locks himself in the room.
A week later, breaking the door, they find it with a razor cut throat. The poor fellow is buried in the Okhta cemetery, and even his friend Pirogov is not present at the funeral, since the lieutenant himself, in turn, has gone down in history.
Small is not a miss, he, chasing his blonde, ends up in the apartment of a certain teller Schiller, who at that moment, being very drunk, asks the drunken shoemaker Hoffmann to cut off his nose with a boot knife. Lieutenant Pirogov who prevented them from doing so, stumbled upon rudeness, retreating. But only in order to return on the next morning to continue his love affair with the blonde, who turned out to be Schiller's wife. He orders the tinsmith to make spurs for himself and, taking the opportunity, continues the siege, provoking, however, jealousy in her husband.
On Sunday, when Schiller is not at home, Pirogov appears to his wife, dances with her, kisses her, and just at that moment Schiller is with his friend Hoffmann and joiner Kunz, also, incidentally, a German. Drunken angry artisans grab Lieutenant Pirogov by the hands, feet and create something so rude and impolite on him that the author does not find words to describe this action. Only a draft manuscript of Gogol, not censored in this place, allows us to interrupt our guesses and find out that Pirogov was carved! In a fury, the lieutenant flies out of the house, promising the tinsmith lashes and Siberia, at least. However, on the way, going into the confectionery, having eaten a couple of pies and reading the newspaper, Pirogov cooled, and having distinguished himself in the evening in the mazurka from his friends, he completely calmed down.
Such a strange, incomprehensible incident. However, on Nevsky Prospect, under the fraudulent, incorrect light of lanterns, the author assures us, everything is just that ...
