But besides this, Petersburg had physically an agreeable effect on Stepan Arkadyevitch.

It made him younger.

In Moscow he sometimes found a gray hair in his head, dropped asleep after dinner, stretched, walked slowly upstairs, breathing heavily, was bored by the society of young women, and did not dance at balls.

In Petersburg he always felt ten years younger.

His experience in Petersburg was exactly what had been described to him on the previous day by Prince Pyotr Oblonsky, a man of sixty, who had just come back from abroad: "We don't know the way to live here," said Pyotr Oblonsky.