““In the lacquered house the storms of life took their course quietly; nevertheless the storms of life here took their course calamitously: they did not thunder with events; they did not shine a cleansing light into the inhabitants’ hearts with arrows of lightning; but from a hoarse throat they wrung the air in a torrent of poisonous fluids; and in the consciousness of the inhabitants cerebral games swirled round, like dense gases in hermetically sealed jars.””
![“Once [the Senator's] brain has come into play with the mysterious stranger, that stranger exists, really does exist: he will not disappear from the Petersburg prospects while a senator with such thoughts exists, because thought, too, exists. And so let our stranger be a real live stranger! And let…” quote by Andrei Bely](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/fd9/andrei-bely-47032_russian-literature_once-the-senator-s-brain-has-come-into-p_2140326.jpg)
