The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky

IT had just struck midnight from all the St Petersburg clock-towers that displayed or chimed the hour when Mr Golyadkin ran out, beside himself, on to the Fontanka embankment near Izmailovsky Bridge, escaping from his enemies, from persecution, from the hail of slights that had descended on him, the shrieks of alarmed old women, the gasps and exclamations of the ladies, and Andrey Philippovich's annihilating stare. Mr Golyadkin was crushed – utterly crushed, in the full sense of the word, and if he still retained the capacity to run at that moment, it was by a miracle, a miracle which he himself, of course, refused to believe in. It was a terrible night, a November night, damp, foggy, rainy, snowy, fraught with agues, catarrhs, colds, quinsies, fevers of every possible species and variety, in short with all the blessings of a St Petersburg November. The wind howled in the empty streets, whipping the black water of the Fontanka higher than the mooring-rings and mischievously snatching at the flickering embankment lights, which in their turn echoed its wailing with the thin piercing squeak that makes up the endless whining, creaking concert so familiar to every inhabitant of St Petersburg. It was snowing and raining both together. Jets of rainwater, broken off by the wind, spouted all but horizontally as if from firehoses, pricking and cutting the wretched Mr Golyadkin's face like thousands of pins and needles. In the nocturnal quiet, broken only by the distant rumble of coaches, the howl of the wind and the squeaking of the swinging street-lamps, the splash and murmur of the water running from every roof, porch, gutter, and cornice on to the granite flags of the pavement had a dismal sound. There was not a soul to be seen far or near, and it seemed there could be nobody about at that hour and in that weather. Thus only Mr Golyadkin, alone with his despair, trotted with his small quick steps along the pavement of the Fontanka, hurrying to reach as quickly as possible his Shestilavochny Street, his fourth floor, and his own flat.