Idiot Wind: The opening chapter in Dostoyevsky's novel

Right from the start Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" establishes two vivid characters - each so distinct and unusual - and each a true Dostoyevsky "type": the two men meet as strangers on a train, a long train ride from Poland to St. Petersburg - it's striking first of all because they're both traveling third class, and it's obvious that they're both well educated and probably well off: one is Prince Myshkin, the title character, D. describes him as pallid and austere looking and notes that you can tell from a glance that he suffers from the "falling sickness," that is epilepsy, as D. himself did I think: he's a Prince but in that weird Russian way he has the title but apparently very little money, and even his title, as they two men (joined by a 3rd, a hapless clerk, Lebedev?), discuss, is perhaps doubtful or minor - who can understand this peculari clinging to royalty and rank so prevalent in European fiction (and life) in the 19th century (and still) and so odd to Americans. Myshkin returning from several years of ineffective medical treatment, and he has no money and no prospects but plans to call on some distant relatives, the Epanchins?, and ask for aid. The newfound companion, Roghozin (?), is a "swarthy" type also returning after time abroad - a completely different personality. He's passionate and amorous and wildly impulsive - apparently stole money his father had entrusted to him and used it to buy diamond earrings for an indifferent woman (Nastasya) he was courting - infuriating his father, leading to exile. Myshkin, on the other hand, is mild and naive, a "holy fool," and uninterested in or inexperienced about women - these two are clearly the prototypes for two of the brothers in the later great novel The Brothers Karamzov: one frenetic and impulsive and passionate, and the other spiritual and ethereal and charitable, one a victim and the other a victimizer. As always with D., even in a scene of a discussion on a railroad journey, the story is told at a fevered pitch and characters take impulsive actions that are so odd and unexpected as to be probably not credible - except in the world of Russian fiction - they are not just Dostoyevsky characters but they are Dostoyevskyan.