"Sometimes, on holidays, I would go to the Nevsky Prospect in the afternoon and enjoy a walk along the sunny side. That is, I didn’t actually enjoy my walk at all: I experienced an endless series of torments, crushing humiliations and attacks of spleen; but probably that was necessary to me. I darted like a minnow through passers-by, in a most ungraceful fashion, constantly giving way to generals. officers of the Horse Guards and the Hussars, and fine ladies; at those moments I felt a spasmodic pain in my heart and hot flushes down my spine at the thought of the wretched inadequacy of my costume and the mean vulgarity of my small figure darting about.
It was an agonizing torment, a never-ending unbearable humiliation, caused by the suspicion, constantly growing into clear-cut certainty, that compared to them I was a fly, a nasty obscene fly - cleverer, better educated, nobler than any of them, that goes without saying - but a fly, always getting out of everybody’s way, humiliated and slighted by everybody. Why I courted this torment, why I went to Nevsky Prospect, I don’t know. But I felt drawn there on every possible occasion."