The Idiot | Page 4

sees upon travellers during the
winter months in Switzerland or North Italy--was by no means adapted
to the long cold journey through Russia, from Eydkuhnen to St.
Petersburg.
The wearer of this cloak was a young fellow, also of about twenty-six
or twenty-seven years of age, slightly above the middle height, very fair,
with a thin, pointed and very light coloured beard; his eyes were large
and blue, and had an intent look about them, yet that heavy expression
which some people affirm to be a peculiarity. as well as evidence, of an
epileptic subject. His face was decidedly a pleasant one for all that;
refined, but quite colourless, except for the circumstance that at this
moment it was blue with cold. He held a bundle made up of an old
faded silk handkerchief that apparently contained all his travelling
wardrobe, and wore thick shoes and gaiters, his whole appearance
being very un-Russian.
His black-haired neighbour inspected these peculiarities, having
nothing better to do, and at length remarked, with that rude enjoyment
of the discomforts of others which the common classes so often show:
"Cold?"
"Very," said his neighbour, readily. "and this is a thaw, too. Fancy if it
had been a hard frost! I never thought it would be so cold in the old
country. 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
then laughed.

The conversation proceeded. The readiness of the fair-haired young
man in the cloak to answer all his opposite neighbour's questions was
surprising. He seemed to have no suspicion of any impertinence or
inappropriateness in the fact of such questions being put to him.
Replying to them, he made known to the inquirer that he certainly had
been long absent from Russia, more than four years; that he had been
sent abroad for his health; that he had suffered from some strange
nervous malady--a kind of epilepsy, with convulsive spasms. His
interlocutor burst out laughing several times at his answers; and more
than ever, when to the question, " whether he had been cured?" the
patient replied:
"No, they did not cure me."
"Hey! that's it! You stumped up your money for nothing, and we
believe in those fellows, here!" remarked the black-haired individual,
sarcastically.
"Gospel truth, sir, Gospel truth!" exclaimed another passenger, a
shabbily dressed man of about forty, who looked like a clerk, and
possessed a red nose and a very blotchy face. "Gospel truth! All they do
is 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 Swiss
patient, quietly. "Of course I can't argue the matter, because I know
only my own case; but my doctor gave me money--and he had very
little--to pay my journey back, besides having kept me at his own
expense, 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 couple
of years ago. I wrote to Mrs. General Epanchin at the time (she is a
distant relative of mine), but she did not answer my letter. And so
eventually 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, with extreme
satisfaction, "and that he has precious little in the luggage van!--though
of course poverty is no crime--we must remember that!"
It appeared that it was indeed as they had surmised. The young fellow
hastened to admit the fact with wonderful readiness.
"Your bundle has some importance, however," continued the clerk,
when they had laughed their fill (it was observable that the subject of
their mirth joined in the laughter when he saw them laughing); "for
though I dare say it is not stuffed full of friedrichs d'or and louis
d'or--judge from your costume and gaiters--still--if you can add to your
possessions such a valuable property as a relation like Mrs. General
Epanchin, then your bundle becomes a significant object at once. That
is, of course, if you really are a relative of Mrs. Epanchin's, and have
not made a little error through--well, absence of mind, which is very
common to human beings; or, say--through a too luxuriant fancy?"
"Oh, you are right again," said the fair-haired traveller, "for I really am
ALMOST wrong when I say she and I are related. She is hardly a
relation at all; so little, in fact, that I was not in the least surprised