Part One
Chapter I

The novel begins in winter on a train heading to Petersburg from Warsaw at 9 in the morning.
We're presented with an image of tired business people, cold, with pale yellow faces, "matching the color of the fog."

In one of the third-class carriages we encounter two characters, who we soon realize are Prince  Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin and Parfyon Rogozhin. Prince Myshkin is returning from a 4-year hiatus in Switzerland, where he was undergoing treatment for some "strange nervous illness." He seems calm and mellow now, though. He believes he is the last of his lineage.

Rogozhin tells his new friend a long story about his family, ultimately ending with him owed some millions of rubles which he intends to inherit.

Some more names are mentioned; Lebedev, a civil servant, Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov, Zalyozhev, Seryozhka Protushin, and  a Parfyon Semyonych. Rogozhin intertwines them all into an encounter ending with him being bitten by dogs, and defending the name "Nastasya Filippovna" from his audience.

Ultimately, the Prince is invited to meet Nastasya Filippovna, and accepts: "I'll come with the greatest pelasure, and I thank you very much for loving me....Because, I'll tell you frnakly, I like you very much, and I especially liked you when you were telling about the diamond pendants...even before the pendants I liked you, despite your gloomy face." Myshkin is charming and sweet.

Rogozhin says of him, "You come out as a holy fool, Prince, and God loves your kind!"
There is clearly something special about Myshkin. I can't wait to find out what that is.