Project Gutenberg's The Idiot, by (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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Title: The Idiot

Author: (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translator: Eva Martin

Posting Date: December 22, 2008 [EBook #2638]
Release Date: May, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDIOT ***

Produced by Martin Adamson

THE IDIOT

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translated by Eva Martin

PART I

I.

Towards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o'clock one morning,
a train on 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 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 returning from
abroad; but the third-class carriages were the best filled, chiefly with
insignificant persons of various 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 shivering expression, while their
complexions 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 particular 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.

One of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, with
black curling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes. His nose was broad
and flat, 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