The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky,

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The Idiot
By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Part I
The Idiot
I
T
owards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine
o’clock one morning, a train on the Warsaw and Peters-
burg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed.
he morning was so damp and misty that it was only with
great diiculty that the day succeeded in breaking; and it
was impossible to distinguish anything more than a few
yards away from the carriage windows.
Some of the passengers by this particular train were re-
turning from abroad; but the third-class carriages were the
best illed, chiely with insigniicant persons of various oc-
cupations and degrees, picked up at the diferent stations
nearer town. All of them seemed weary, and most of them
had sleepy eyes and a shivering expression, while their com-
plexions generally appeared to have taken on the colour of
the fog outside.
When day dawned, two passengers in one of the third-
class carriages found themselves opposite each other. Both
were young fellows, both were rather poorly dressed, both
had remarkable faces, and both were evidently anxious to
start a conversation. If they had but known why, at this par-
ticular moment, they were both remarkable persons, they
would undoubtedly have wondered at the strange chance
which had set them down opposite to one another in a third-
class carriage of the Warsaw Railway Company.
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One of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven,
not tall, with black curling hair, and small, grey, iery eyes.
His nose was broad and lat, and he had high cheek bones;
his thin lips were constantly compressed into an impudent,
ironical—it might almost be called a malicious—smile; but
his forehead was high and well formed, and atoned for a
good deal of the ugliness of the lower part of his face. A
special feature of this physiognomy was its death-like pallor,
which gave to the whole man an indescribably emaciated
appearance in spite of his hard look, and at the same time
a sort of passionate and sufering expression which did not
harmonize with his impudent, sarcastic smile and keen,
self-satisied bearing. He wore a large fur—or rather astra-
chan—overcoat, which had kept him warm all night, while
his neighbour had been obliged to bear the full severity of
a Russian November night entirely unprepared. His wide
sleeveless mantle with a large cape to it—the sort of cloak
one sees upon travellers during the winter months in Swit-
zerland or North Italy—was by no means adapted to the
long cold journey through Russia, from Eydkuhnen to St.
Petersburg.
he wearer of this cloak was a young fellow, also of about
twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age, slightly above the
middle height, very fair, with a thin, pointed and very light
coloured beard; his eyes were large and blue, and had an in-
tent look about them, yet that heavy expression which some
people airm to be a peculiarity. as well as evidence, of an
epileptic subject. His face was decidedly a pleasant one for
all that; reined, but quite colourless, except for the circum-
The Idiot
stance that at this moment it was blue with cold. He held
a bundle made up of an old faded silk handkerchief that
apparently contained all his travelling wardrobe, and wore
thick shoes and gaiters, his whole appearance being very un-
Russian.
His black-haired neighbour inspected these peculiarities,
having nothing better to do, and at length remarked, with
that rude enjoyment of the discomforts of others which the
common classes so oten show:
‘Cold?’
‘Very,’ said his neighbour, readily. ‘and this is a thaw, too.
Fancy if it had been a hard frost! I never thought it would
be so cold in the old country. I’ve grown quite out of the
way of it.’
‘What, been abroad, I suppose?’
‘Yes, straight from Switzerland.’
‘Wheugh! my goodness!’ he black-haired young fellow
whistled, and then laughed.
he conversation proceeded. he readiness of the fair-
haired young man in the cloak to answer all his opposite
neighbour’s questions was surprising. He seemed to have
no suspicion of any impertinence or inappropriateness in
the fact of such questions being put to him. Replying to
them, he made known to the inquirer that he certainly had
been long absent from Russia, more than four years; that
he had been sent abroad for his health; that he had sufered
from some strange nervous malady—a kind of epilepsy,
with convulsive spasms. His interlocutor burst out laugh-
ing several times at his answers; and more than ever, when
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The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky,

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