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 Eydkuhnen 1to Petersburg. But what was proper and quite satisfactory in Italy turned out to be not entirely suitable to Russia. The owner of the cloak with the hood was a young man, also about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, slightly taller than average, with very blond, thick hair, sunken cheeks, and a sparse, pointed, nearly white little beard. His eyes were big, blue, and intent; their gaze had something quiet but heavy about it and was filled with that strange expression by which some are able to guess at first sight that the subject has the falling sickness. The young man's face, however, was pleasant, fine, and dry, but colorless, and now even blue with cold. From his hands dangled a meager bundle made of old, faded foulard, containing, apparently, all his traveling possessions. On his feet he had thick-soled shoes with gaiters—all not the Russian way. His black-haired companion in the lambskin coat took all this in, partly from having nothing to do, and finally asked, with that tactless grin which sometimes expresses so unceremoniously and carelessly people's pleasure in their neighbor's misfortunes:
"Chilly?"
And he hunched his shoulders.
"Very," his companion replied with extreme readiness, "and note that this is a warm spell. What if it were freezing? It didn't even occur to me that it was so cold at home. I'm unaccustomed to it."
"Coming from abroad, are you?"
"Yes, from Switzerland."
"Whew! Fancy that! ..."
The black-haired man whistled and laughed.
They got to talking. The readiness of the blond young man in the Swiss cloak to answer all his swarthy companion's questions was astonishing and betrayed no suspicion of the utter carelessness, idleness, and impropriety of some of the questions. In answering them he said, among other things, that he had indeed been away from Russia for a long time, more than four years, that he had been sent abroad on account of illness, some strange nervous illness like the falling sickness or St. Vitus's dance, some sort of trembling and convulsions. Listening to him, the swarthy man grinned several
times; he laughed particularly when, to his question: "And did they cure you?" the blond man answered: "No, they didn't."
"Heh! Got all that money for nothing, and we go believing them," the swarthy man remarked caustically.
"That's the real truth!" a poorly dressed gentleman who was sitting nearby broke into the conversation—some sort of encrusted copying clerk, about forty years old, strongly built, with a red nose and a pimply face, "the real truth, sir, they just draw all Russian forces to themselves for nothing!"
"Oh, you're quite wrong in my case," the Swiss patient picked up in a soft and conciliatory voice. "Of course, I can't argue, because I don't know everything, but my doctor gave me some of his last money for the trip and kept me there for almost two years at his own expense."
"What, you mean there was nobody to pay?" asked the swarthy man.
"Mr. Pavlishchev, who supported me there, died two years ago. Then I wrote here to General Epanchin's wife, my distant relation, but I got no answer. So with that I've come back."
"Come back where, though?"
"You mean where will I be staying? ... I don't really know yet . . . so . . ."
"You haven't decided yet?"
And both listeners burst out laughing again.
"And I supppose that bundle contains your whole essence?" the swarthy man asked.
"I'm ready to bet it does," the red-nosed clerk picked up with an extremely pleased air, "and that there's no further belongings in the baggage car—though poverty's no vice, that again is something one can't help observing."
It turned out to be so: the blond young man acknowledged it at once and with extraordinary alacrity.
"Your bundle has a certain significance all the same," the clerk went on after they had laughed their fill (remarkably, the owner of the bundle, looking at them, finally started laughing himself, which increased their merriment), "and though you can bet it doesn't contain any imported gold packets of napoleondors or fried-richsdors, or any Dutch yellow boys, 2a thing that might be deduced merely from the gaiters enclosing your foreign shoes, but ... if to your bundle we were to add some such supposed relation as General Epanchin's wife, then your bundle would take on a
somewhat different significance, naturally only in the case that General Epanchin's wife is indeed your relation, and you didn't make a mistake out of absentmindedness . . . which is quite, quite human . . . well, say . . . from an excess of imagination."
"Oh, you've guessed right again," the blond young man picked up. "I am indeed almost mistaken, that is, she's almost not my relation; so that I really wasn't surprised in the least when they didn't answer me there. I even expected it."
"Wasted your money franchising the letter for nothing. Hm . . . but at any rate you're simple-hearted and sincere, which is commendable! Hm . . . and General Epanchin we know, sir, essentially because he's a generally known man. And the late Mr. Pavlishchev, who supported you in Switzerland, we also knew, sir, if it was Nikolai Andreevich Pavlishchev, because there were two cousins. The other one is still in the Crimea, but the deceased Nikolai Andreevich was a respectable man, and with connections, and owned four thousand souls 3in his time, sir . . ."
"Just so, his name was Nikolai Andreevich Pavlishchev," and, having responded, the young man looked intently and inquisitively at Mr. Know-it-all.