«The Idiot» in Russian

Towards the end of November, during a warm spell, at around nine o'clock in the morning, a train of the Petersburg-Warsaw line was approaching Petersburg at full steam.

It was so damp and foggy that dawn could barely break; ten paces to right or left of the line it was hard to make out anything at all through the carriage windows.

Among the passengers there were some who were returning from abroad; but the third-class compartments were more crowded, and they were all petty business folk from not far away.

Everyone was tired, as usual, everyone's eyes had grown heavy overnight, everyone was chilled, everyone's face was pale yellow, matching the color of the fog.

In one of the third-class carriages, at dawn, two passengers found themselves facing each other just by the window — both young men, both traveling light, both unfashionably dressed, both with rather remarkable physiognomies, and both, finally, willing to get into conversation with each other.

If they had known what was so remarkable about the one and the other at that moment, they would certainly have marveled at the chance that had so strangely seated them facing each other in the third-class carriage of the Petersburg-Warsaw train.

One of them was of medium height, about twenty-seven years old, with curly, almost black hair, and small but fiery gray eyes.

He had a broad, flat nose and high cheekbones; his thin lips were constantly twisting into a sort of impudent, mocking, and even malicious smile; but his forehead was high and well formed and made up for the lack of nobility in the lower part of his face.

Especially notable was the deathly pallor of his face, which gave the young man's whole physiognomy an exhausted look, despite his rather robust build, and at the same time suggested something passionate, to the point of suffering, which was out of harmony with his insolent and coarse smile and his sharp, self-satisfied gaze.

He was warmly dressed in an ample lambskin coat covered with black cloth and had not been cold during the night, while his neighbor had been forced to bear on his chilled back all the sweetness of a damp Russian November night, for which he was obviously not prepared.

He was wearing a rather ample and thick sleeveless cloak with an enormous hood, the sort often worn by winter travelers somewhere far abroad, in Switzerland or northern Italy, for instance, certainly not reckoning on such long distances as from Eydkuhnen1 to Petersburg.