“On the shore of the desert waves” of the Neva, Peter stands and thinks about the city that will be built here and which will become Russia's window to Europe. A hundred years passed, and the city "from the darkness of forests, from the swamps of blat / ascended magnificently, proudly." Peter's creation is beautiful, it is a triumph of harmony and light, which replaced chaos and darkness.

November in St. Petersburg breathed cold, Neva splashed and rustled. Late in the evening, a small official named Evgeny returns home to his closet in a poor district of St. Petersburg called Kolomna. Once his family was notable, but now even the memory of it has been erased, and Eugene himself is wild for noble people. He lays down, but cannot fall asleep, amused by thoughts of his situation, that bridges were removed from the arriving river and that this will separate him from his lover, Parasha, who lives on the other side for two or three days. The thought of Parash gives birth to dreams of marriage and a future happy and modest life in the family circle, together with a loving and beloved wife and children. Finally, lulled by sweet thoughts, Eugene falls asleep.

“The darkness of a rainy night is thinned / And the pale day is coming ...” The day has brought terrible misfortune. Neva, not having overcome the force of the wind, which blocked its path to the bay, poured into the city and flooded it. The weather was fiercer more and more, and soon all of Petersburg was under water. The raging waves behave like soldiers of the enemy army, which took the city by storm. The people see in this God's wrath and awaits execution. The tsar, who ruled Russia that year, goes to the balcony of the palace and says that “God will not control the elements / tsars”.

At that time, on the Petrova Square, on the marble sculpture of a lion at the porch of a new luxurious house, the motionless Evgeny was sitting, not feeling the wind ripping his hat off him, how the rising water was wetting his soles, as rain was pouring into his face. He looks at the opposite bank of the Neva, where very close to the water his beloved and his mother live in his poor little house. As if bewitched by gloomy thoughts, Eugene can not budge, and his back to him, towering above the elements, "stands with his prostrated arm idol on a bronze horse."

But finally, the Neva entered the shores, the water was asleep, and Eugene, pausing, hurries to the river, finds a boatman and crosses to the other side. He runs down the street and cannot recognize familiar places. Everything is destroyed by the flood, all around it resembles a battlefield, bodies are lying around. Eugene hurries to where the familiar house stood, but does not find it. He sees a willow growing at the gate, but there is no gate itself. Unable to bear the shock, Eugene laughed, losing his mind.

The new day that rises above St. Petersburg no longer finds traces of the recent destruction, everything has been put in order, the city has begun to live a familiar life. Only Eugene could not resist the shocks. He wanders around the city, full of gloomy thoughts, and in his ears the sound of a storm is heard all the time. So in wanderings he spends a week, a month, wanders, eats alms, sleeps on the pier. Evil children throw stones after him, and the coachman whips, but it seems that he does not notice anything. He is still stunned by inner anxiety. Once closer to the fall, in inclement weather, Eugene wakes up and vividly recalls last year's horror. He gets up, wanders hastily and suddenly sees a house in front of which there are marble sculptures of lions with their paws raised, and a “rider above a fenced rock” is sitting on a bronze horse with an outstretched arm. Eugene’s thoughts suddenly become clear, he recognizes this place and the one “whose fateful will / Under the sea the city was founded ...”. Eugene walks around the foot of the monument, looking wildly at the statue, he feels extraordinary excitement and anger and threatens the monument with anger, but suddenly it seemed to him that the face of the formidable king was turning to him, and anger sparkled in his eyes, and Eugene rushed away, hearing for a heavy stomp of copper hooves. And all night the unfortunate man rushes about the city and it seems to him that the rider with heavy stomp gallops after him everywhere. And from that time, if he happened to walk through the square on which the statue stands, he embarrassedly took off his cap and pressed his hand to his heart, as if asking for forgiveness from a formidable idol.

At the seaside you can see a small desert island, where fishermen sometimes moor. A flood brought here an empty, dilapidated house, at the threshold of which they found the corpse of poor Eugene and immediately "buried for God's sake."