The Idiot Read online

  Produced by Martin Adamson, David Widger, with corrections by Andrew Sly

  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 lattercity at full speed. The morning was so damp and misty that it was onlywith great difficulty that the day succeeded in breaking; and it wasimpossible to distinguish anything more than a few yards away from thecarriage windows.

  Some of the passengers by this particular train were returning fromabroad; but the third-class carriages were the best filled, chiefly withinsignificant persons of various occupations and degrees, picked up atthe different stations nearer town. All of them seemed weary, andmost of them had sleepy eyes and a shivering expression, while theircomplexions generally appeared to have taken on the colour of the fogoutside.

  When day dawned, two passengers in one of the third-class carriagesfound themselves opposite each other. Both were young fellows, bothwere rather poorly dressed, both had remarkable faces, and both wereevidently anxious to start a conversation. If they had but known why,at this particular moment, they were both remarkable persons, they wouldundoubtedly have wondered at the strange chance which had set them downopposite to one another in a third-class carriage of the Warsaw RailwayCompany.

  One of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, withblack curling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes. His nose was broadand flat, and he had high cheek bones; his thin lips were constantlycompressed into an impudent, ironical--it might almost be called amalicious--smile; but his forehead was high and well formed, and atonedfor a good deal of the ugliness of the lower part of his face. A specialfeature of this physiognomy was its death-like pallor, which gave tothe whole man an indescribably emaciated appearance in spite of his hardlook, and at the same time a sort of passionate and suffering expressionwhich did not harmonize with his impudent, sarcastic smile andkeen, self-satisfied bearing. He wore a large fur--or ratherastrachan--overcoat, which had kept him warm all night, while hisneighbour had been obliged to bear the full severity of a RussianNovember night entirely unprepared. His wide sleeveless mantle with alarge cape to it--the sort of cloak one sees upon travellers during thewinter months in Switzerland or North Italy--was by no means adapted tothe long cold journey through Russia, from Eydkuhnen to St. Petersburg.

  The wearer of this cloak was a young fellow, also of about twenty-six ortwenty-seven years of age, slightly above the middle height, very fair,with a thin, pointed and very light coloured beard; his eyes were largeand blue, and had an intent look about them, yet that heavy expressionwhich some people affirm to be a peculiarity as well as evidence, of anepileptic subject. His face was decidedly a pleasant one for all that;refined, but quite colourless, except for the circumstance that at thismoment it was blue with cold. He held a bundle made up of an old fadedsilk handkerchief that apparently contained all his travelling wardrobe,and wore thick shoes and gaiters, his whole appearance being veryun-Russian.

  His black-haired neighbour inspected these peculiarities, having nothingbetter to do, and at length remarked, with that rude enjoyment of thediscomforts of others which the common classes so often show:

  “Cold?”

  “Very,” said his neighbour, readily, “and this is a thaw, too. Fancy ifit had been a hard frost! I never thought it would be so cold in the oldcountry. I’ve grown quite out of the way of it.”

  “What, been abroad, I suppose?”

  “Yes, straight from Switzerland.”

  “Wheugh! my goodness!” The black-haired young fellow whistled, and thenlaughed.

  The conversation proceeded. The readiness of the fair-haired youngman in the cloak to answer all his opposite neighbour’s questionswas surprising. He seemed to have no suspicion of any impertinenceor inappropriateness in the fact of such questions being put to him.Replying to them, he made known to the inquirer that he certainly hadbeen long absent from Russia, more than four years; that he had beensent abroad for his health; that he had suffered from some strangenervous malady--a kind of epilepsy, with convulsive spasms. Hisinterlocutor burst out laughing several times at his answers; andmore than ever, when to the question, “whether he had been cured?” thepatient replied:

  “No, they did not cure me.”

  “Hey! that’s it! You stumped up your money for nothing, and webelieve in those fellows, here!” remarked the black-haired individual,sarcastically.

  “Gospel truth, sir, Gospel truth!” exclaimed another passenger, ashabbily dressed man of about forty, who looked like a clerk, andpossessed a red nose and a very blotchy face. “Gospel truth! All they dois to get hold of our good Russian money free, gratis, and for nothing.”

  “Oh, but you’re quite wrong in my particular instance,” said the Swisspatient, quietly. “Of course I can’t argue the matter, because Iknow only my own case; but my doctor gave me money--and he had verylittle--to pay my journey back, besides having kept me at his ownexpense, while there, for nearly two years.”

  “Why? Was there no one else to pay for you?” asked the black-haired one.

  “No--Mr. Pavlicheff, who had been supporting me there, died a coupleof years ago. I wrote to Mrs. General Epanchin at the time (she is adistant relative of mine), but she did not answer my letter. And soeventually I came back.”

  “And where have you come to?”

  “That is--where am I going to stay? I--I really don’t quite know yet,I--”

  Both the listeners laughed again.

  “I suppose your whole set-up is in that bundle, then?” asked the first.

  “I bet anything it is!” exclaimed the red-nosed passenger, withextreme satisfaction, “and that he has precious little in the luggagevan!--though of course poverty is no crime--we must remember that!”

  It appeared that it was indeed as they had surmised. The young fellowhastened to admit the fact with wonderful readiness.

  “Your bundle has some importance, however,” continued the clerk, whenthey had laughed their fill (it was observable that the subject of theirmirth joined in the laughter when he saw them laughing); “for though Idare say it is not stuffed full of friedrichs d’or and louis d’or--judgefrom your costume and gaiters--still--if you can add to your possessionssuch a valuable property as a relation like Mrs. General Epanchin, thenyour bundle becomes a significant object at once. That is, of course, ifyou really are a relative of Mrs. Epanchin’s, and have not made a littleerror through--well, absence of mind, which is very common to humanbeings; or, say--through a too luxuriant fancy?”

  “Oh, you are right again,” said the fair-haired traveller, “for Ireally am _almost_ wrong when I say she and I are related. She is hardlya relation at all; so little, in fact, that I was not in the leastsurprised to have no answer to my letter. I expected as much.”

  “H’m! you spent your postage for nothing, then. H’m! you are candid,however--and that is commendable. H’m! Mrs. Epanchin--oh yes! a mosteminent person. I know her. As for Mr. Pavlicheff, who supported you inSwitzerland, I know him too--at least, if it was Nicolai Andreevitchof that name? A fine fellow he was--and had a property of four thousandsouls in his day.”

  “Yes, Nicolai Andreevitch--that was his name,” and the young fellowlooked earnestly and with curiosity at the all-knowing gentleman withthe red nose.

  This sort of character is met with pretty frequently in a certain class.They are people who know everyone--that is, they know where a man isemployed, what his salary is, whom he knows, whom he married, what moneyhis wife had, who are his cousins, and second cousins, etc., etc. Thesemen generally have about a hundred pounds a year to live on, and theyspend their whole time and
talents in the amassing of this style ofknowledge, which they reduce--or raise--to the standard of a science.

  During the latter part of the conversation the black-haired young manhad become very impatient. He stared out of the window, and fidgeted,and evidently longed for the end of the journey. He was very absent;he would appear to listen--and heard nothing; and he would laugh of asudden, evidently with no idea of what he was laughing about.

  “Excuse me,” said the red-nosed man to the young fellow with the bundle,rather suddenly; “whom have I the honour to be talking to?”

  “Prince Lef Nicolaievitch Muishkin,” replied the latter, with perfectreadiness.

  “Prince Muishkin? Lef Nicolaievitch? H’m! I don’t know, I’m sure! I maysay I have never heard of such a person,” said the clerk, thoughtfully.“At least, the name, I admit, is historical. Karamsin must mention thefamily name, of course, in his history--but as an individual--one neverhears of any Prince Muishkin nowadays.”

  “Of course not,” replied the prince; “there are none, except myself.I believe I am the last and only one. As to my forefathers, they