The Idiot : Original Text

Towards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o'clock one morning, a trainon the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed.The morning was so damp and misty that it was only with great difficulty that theday succeeded in breaking; and it was impossible to distinguish anything more thana few yards away from the carriage windows.Some of the passengers by this particular train were returning from abroad; butthe third-class carriages were the best filled, chiefly with insignificant persons ofvarious occupations and degrees, picked up at the different stations nearer town.All of them seemed weary, and most of them had sleepy eyes and a shiveringexpression, while their complexions generally appeared to have taken on the colourof the fog outside.When day dawned, two passengers in one of the third-class carriages foundthemselves opposite each other.

Both were young fellows, both were rather poorlydressed, both had remarkable faces, and both were evidently anxious to start aconversation.

If they had but known why, at this particular moment, they were bothremarkable persons, they would undoubtedly have wondered at the strange chancewhich had set them down opposite to one another in a third-class carriage of theWarsaw Railway Company.One of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, with blackcurling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes.

His nose was broad and flat, and he hadhigh 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 andwell 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 thewhole man an indescribably emaciated appearance in spite of his hard look, and atthe same time a sort of passionate and suffering expression which did notharmonize with his impudent, sarcastic smile and keen, self-satisfied bearing.

Hewore a large fur-or rather astrachan-overcoat, which had kept him warm all night,while his neighbour had been obliged to bear the full severity of a RussianNovember night entirely unprepared.

His wide sleeveless mantle with a large capeto it-the sort of cloak one sees upon travellers during the winter months inSwitzerland or North Italy-was by no means adapted to the long cold journeythrough Russia, from Eydkuhnen to St.

Petersburg.