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.