"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,² a 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 souls³ in 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.

These Mr. Know-it-alls are occasionally, even quite frequently, to be met with in a certain social stratum. They know everything, all the restless inquisitiveness of their minds and all their abilities are turned irresistibly in one direction, certainly for lack of more important life interests and perspectives, as a modern thinker would say. The phrase "they know all" implies, however, a rather limited sphere: where so-and-so works, who he is acquainted with, how much he is worth, where he was governor, who he is married to, how much his wife brought him, who his cousins are, who his cousins twice removed are, etc., etc., all in the same vein. For the most part these know-it-alls go about with holes at the elbows and earn a salary of seventeen roubles a month. The people whose innermost secrets they know would, of course, be unable to understand what interests guide them, and yet many of them are positively consoled by this knowledge that amounts to a whole science; they achieve self-respect and even the highest spiritual satisfaction. Besides, it is a seductive science. I have known scholars, writers, poets, political activists who sought and found their highest peace and purpose in this science, who positively made their careers by it alone. During this whole conversation the swarthy young man kept yawning, looking aimlessly out of the window and waiting

impatiently for the end of the journey. He seemed somehow distracted, very distracted, all but alarmed, was even becoming somehow strange: sometimes he listened without listening, looked without looking, laughed without always knowing or understanding himself why he was laughing.

"But, excuse me, with whom do I have the honor . . ." the pimply gentleman suddenly addressed the blond young man with the bundle.

"Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin," the other replied with full and immediate readiness.

"Prince Myshkin? Lev Nikolaevich? Don't know it, sir. Never even so much as heard it, sir," the clerk replied, pondering. "I don't mean the name, the name's historical, it can and should be found in Karamzin's History,⁴ I mean the person, sir, there's no Prince Myshkins to be met with anywhere, and even the rumors have died out."

"Oh, that's certain!" the prince answered at once. "There are no Prince Myshkins at all now except me; it seems I'm the last one. And as for our fathers and grandfathers, we've even had some farmers among them. My father, however, was a second lieutenant in the army, from the junkers.⁵ But I don't know in what way Mrs. Epanchin also turns out to be Princess Myshkin, also the last in her line . . ."

"Heh, heh, heh! The last in her line. Heh, heh! What a way to put it," the clerk tittered.

The swarthy man also smiled. The blond man was slightly surprised that he had managed to make a pun, though a rather bad one.

"And imagine, I never thought what I was saying," he finally explained in surprise.