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Fathers and Children

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Title: Fathers and Children

Author: Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Editor: William Allan Neilson

Translator: Constance Garnett


        
Release date: December 21, 2009 [eBook #30723]
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FATHERS AND CHILDREN


[Frontispiece: AVENUE AT SPASSKOE, TURGENEV'S ESTATE]


The Harvard Classics
Shelf of Fiction
[From Vol. 19]
Selected by Charles W. Eliot Ll.D.


FATHERS AND CHILDREN

by

IVAN TURGENEV

Translated by Constance Garnett

Edited with Notes and Introductions by William Allan Neilson Ph.D.







P. F. Collier & Son
New York

Published under special arrangement with
The Macmillan Company

Copyright, 1917
By P. F. Collier & Son




CONTENTS


BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

CRITICISMS AND INTERPRETATIONS:
   I. BY EMILE MELCHIOR, VICOMTE DE VOGÜÉ
  II. BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
 III. BY K. WALISZEWSKI
  IV. BY RICHARD H. P. CURLE
   V. BY MAURICE BARING

LIST OF CHARACTERS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVI




BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE


Ivan Sergyevitch Turgenev came of an old stock of the Russian nobility.
He was born in Orel, in the province of Orel, which lies more than a
hundred miles south of Moscow, on October 28, 1818. His education was
begun by tutors at home in the great family mansion in the town of
Spask, and he studied later at the universities of Moscow, St.
Petersburg, and Berlin. The influence of the last, and of the
compatriots with whom he associated there, was very great; and when he
returned to Moscow in 1841, he was ambitious to teach Hegel to the
students there. Before this could be arranged, however, he entered the
Ministry of the Interior at St. Petersburg. While there his interests
turned more and more toward literature. He wrote verses and comedies,
read George Sand, and made the acquaintance of Dostoevsky and the
critic Bielinski. His mother, a tyrannical woman with an ungovernable
temper, was eager that he should make a brilliant official career; so,
when he resigned from the Ministry in 1845, she showed her disapproval
by cutting down his allowance and thus forcing him to support himself
by the profession he had chosen.

Turgenev was an enthusiastic hunter; and it was his experiences in the
woods of his native province that supplied the material for "A
Sportsman's Sketches," the book that first brought him reputation. The
first of these papers appeared in 1847, and in the same year he left
Russia in the train of Pauline Viardot, a singer and actress, to whom
he had been devoted for three or four years and with whom he maintained
relations for the rest of his life. For a year or two he lived chiefly
in Paris or at a country house at Courtavenel in Brie, which belonged
to Madame Viardot; but in 1850 he returned to Russia. His experiences
were not such as to induce him to repatriate himself permanently. He
found Dostoevsky banished to Siberia and Bielinski dead; and himself
under suspicion by the government on account of the popularity of "A
Sportsman's Sketches." For praising Gogol, who had just died, he was
arrested and imprisoned for a short time, and for the next two years
kept under police surveillance. Meantime he continued to write, and by
the time that the close of the Crimean War made it possible for him
again to go to western Europe, he was recognized as standing at the
head of living Russian authors. His mother was now dead, the estates
were settled, and with an income of about $5,000 a year he became a
wanderer. He had, or imagined he had, very bad health, and the eminent
specialists he consulted sent him from one resort to another, to Rome,
the Isle of Wight, Soden, and the like. When Madame Viardot left the
stage in 1864 and took up her residence at Baden-Baden, he followed her
and built there a small house for himself. They returned to France
after the Franco-Prussian War, and bought a villa at Bougival, near
Paris, and this was his home for the rest of his life. Here, on
September 3, 1883, he died after a long delirium due to his suffering
from cancer of the spinal cord. His body was taken to St. Petersburg
and was buried with national honors.

The two works by Turgenev contained in the present volume are
characteristic in their concern with social and political questions,
and in the prominence in both of them of heroes who fail in action.
Turgenev preaches no doctrine in his novels, has no remedy for the
universe; but he sees clearly certain weaknesses of the Russian
character and exposes these with absolute candor yet without
unkindness. Much as he lived abroad, his books are intensely Russian;
yet of the great Russian novelists he alone rivals the masters of
western Europe in the matter of form. In economy of means,
condensation, felicity of language, and excellence of structure he
surpasses all his countrymen; and "Fathers and Children" and "A House
of Gentlefolk" represent his great and delicate art at its best.

W. A. N.




CRITICISMS AND INTERPRETATIONS




I
BY EMILE MELCHIOR, VICOMTE DE VOGÜÉ


Ivan Sergyevitch (Turgenev) has given us a most complete picture of
Russian society. The same general types are always brought forward;
and, as later writers have presented exactly similar ones, with but few
modifications, we are forced to believe them true to life. First, the
peasant: meek, resigned, dull, pathetic in suffering, like a child who
does not know why he suffers; naturally sharp and tricky when not
stupefied by liquor; occasionally roused to violent passion. Then, the
intelligent middle class: the small landed proprietors of two
generations. The old proprietor is ignorant and good-natured, of
respectable family, but with coarse habits; hard, from long experience
of serfdom, servile himself, but admirable in all other relations of
life.

The young man of this class is of quite a different type. His
intellectual growth having been too rapid, he sometimes plunges into
Nihilism. He is often well educated, melancholy, rich in ideas but poor
in executive ability; always preparing and expecting to accomplish
something of importance, filled with vague and generous projects for
the public good. This is the chosen type of hero in all Russian novels.
Gogol introduced it, and Tolstoy prefers it above all others.

The favorite hero of young girls and romantic women is neither the
brilliant officer, the artist, nor rich lord, but almost universally
this provincial Hamlet, conscientious, cultivated, intelligent, but of
feeble will, who, returning from his studies in foreign lands, is full
of scientific theories about the improvement of mankind and the good of
the lower classes, and eager to apply these theories on his own estate.
It is quite necessary that he should have an estate of his own. He will
have the hearty sympathy of the reader in his efforts to improve the
condition of his dependents.

The Russians well understand the conditions of the future prosperity of
their country; but, as they themselves acknowledge, they know not how
to go to work to accomplish it.

In regard to the women of this class, Turgenev, strange to say, has
little to say of the mothers. This probably reveals the existence of
some old wound, some bitter experience of his own. Without a single
exception, all the mothers in his novels are either wicked or
grotesque. He reserves the treasures of his poetic fancy for the young
girls of his creation. To him the young girl of the country province is
the corner-stone of the fabric of society. Reared in the freedom of
country life, placed in the most healthy social conditions, she is
conscientious, frank, affectionate, without being romantic; less
intelligent than man, but more resolute. In each of his romances an
irresolute man is invariably guided by a woman of strong will.

Such are, generally speaking, the characters the author describes,
which bear so unmistakably the stamp of nature that one cannot refrain
from saying as he closes the book, "These must be portraits from life!"
which criticism is always the highest praise, the best sanction of
works of the imagination.--From "Turgenev", in "The Russian Novelists,"
translated by J. L. Edmands (1887).




II
BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS


Turgenev was of that great race which has more than any other fully and
freely uttered human nature, without either false pride or false shame
in its nakedness. His themes were oftenest those of the French
novelist, but how far he was from handling them in the French manner
and with the French spirit! In his hands sin suffered no dramatic
punishment; it did not always show itself as unhappiness, in the
personal sense, but it was always unrest, and without the hope of
peace. If the end did not appear, the fact that it must be miserable
always appeared. Life showed itself to me in different colors after I
had once read Turgenev; it became more serious, more awful, and with
mystical responsibilities I had not known before. My gay American
horizons were bathed in the vast melancholy of the Slav, patient,
agnostic, trustful. At the same time nature revealed herself to me
through him with an intimacy she had not hitherto shown me. There are
passages in this wonderful writer alive with a truth that seems drawn
from the reader's own knowledge: who else but Turgenev and one's own
most secret self ever felt all the rich, sad meaning of the night air
drawing in at the open window, of the fires burning in the darkness on
the distant fields? I try in vain to give some notion of the subtle
sympathy with nature which scarcely put itself into words with him. As
for the people of his fiction, though they were of orders and
civilizations so remote from my experience, they were of the eternal
human types whose origin and potentialities every one may find in his
own heart, and I felt their verity in every touch.

I cannot describe the satisfaction his work gave me; I can only impart
some sense of it, perhaps, by saying that it was like a happiness I had
been waiting for all my life, and now that it had come, I was richly
content forever. I do not mean to say that the art of Turgenev
surpasses the art of Björnson; I think Björnson is quite as fine and
true. But the Norwegian deals with simple and primitive circumstances
for the most part, and always with a small world; and the Russian has
to do with human nature inside of its conventional shells, and his
scene is often as large as Europe. Even when it is as remote as Norway,
it is still related to the great capitals by the history if not the
actuality of the characters. Most of Turgenev's books I have read many
times over, all of them I have read more than twice. For a number of
years I read them again and again without much caring for other
fiction. It was only the other day that I read "Smoke" through once
more, with no diminished sense of its truth, but with somewhat less
than my first satisfaction in its art. Perhaps this was because I had
reached the point through my acquaintance with Tolstoy where I was
impatient even of the artifice that hid itself. In "Smoke" I was now
aware of an artifice that kept out of sight, but was still always
present somewhere, invisibly operating the story.--From "My Literary
Passions" (1895).




III
BY K. WALISZEWSKI


The second novel of the series, "Fathers and Children," stirred up a
storm the suddenness and violence of which it is not easy, nowadays, to
understand. The figure of Bazarov, the first "Nihilist"--thus baptized
by an inversion of epithet which was to win extraordinary success--is
merely intended to reveal a mental condition which, though the fact had
been insufficiently recognized, had already existed for some years. The
epithet itself had been in constant use since 1829, when Nadiéjdine
applied it to Pushkin, Polevoï, and some other subverters of the
classic tradition. Turgenev only extended its meaning by a new
interpretation, destined to be perpetuated by the tremendous success of
"Fathers and Children." There is nothing, or hardly anything, in
Bazarov, of the terrible revolutionary whom we have since learnt to
look for under this title. Turgenev was not the man to call up such a
figure. He was far too dreamy, too gentle, too good-natured a being.
Already, in the character of Roudine, he had failed, in the strangest
way, to catch the likeness of Bakounine, that fiery organiser of
insurrection, whom all Europe knew, and whom he had selected as his
model. Conceive Corot or Millet trying to paint some figure out of the
Last Judgment after Michael Angelo! Bazarov is the Nihilist in his
first phase, "in course of becoming," as the Germans would say, and he
is a pupil of the German universities. When Turgenev shaped the
character, he certainly drew on his own memories of his stay at Berlin,
at a time when Bruno Bauer was laying it down as a dogma that no
educated man ought to have opinions on any subject, and when Max
Stirner was convincing the young Hegelians that ideas were mere smoke
and dust, seeing that the only reality in existence was the individual
_Ego_. These teachings, eagerly received by the Russian youth, were
destined to produce a state of moral decomposition, the earliest
symptoms of which were admirably analysed by Turgenev.

Bazarov is a very clever man, but clever in thought, and especially in
word, only. He scorns art, women, and family life. He does not know
what the point of honour means. He is a cynic in his love affairs, and
indifferent in his friendships. He has no respect even for paternal
tenderness, but he is full of contradictions, even to the extent of
fighting a duel about nothing at all, and sacrificing his life for the
first peasant he meets. And in this the resemblance is true, much more
general, indeed, than the model selected would lead one to imagine; so
general, in fact, that, apart from the question of art, Turgenev--he
has admitted it himself--felt as if he were drawing his own portrait;
and therefore it is, no doubt, that he has made his hero so
sympathetic.--From "A History of Russian Literature" (1900).




IV
BY RICHARD H. P. CURLE


But for the best expression of the bewilderment of life we have to turn
to the portrait of a man, to the famous Bazarov of "Fathers and
Children." Turgenev raises through him the eternal problem--Has
personality any hold, has life any meaning at all? The reality of this
figure, his contempt for nature, his egoism, his strength, his mothlike
weakness are so convincing that before his philosophy all other
philosophies seem to pale. He is the one who sees the life-illusion,
and yet, knowing that it is the mask of night, grasps at it, loathing
himself. You can hate Bazarov, you cannot have contempt for him. He is
a man of genius, rid of sentiment and hope, believing in nothing but
himself, to whom come, as from the darkness, all the violent questions
of life and death. "Fathers and Children" is simply an exposure of our
power to mould our own lives. Bazarov is a man of astonishing
intellect--he is the pawn of an emotion he despises; he is a man of
gigantic will--he can do nothing but destroy his own beliefs; he is a
man of intense life--he cannot avoid the first, brainless touch of
death. It is the hopeless fight of mind against instinct, of
determination against fate, of personality against impersonality.
Bazarov disdaining everyone, sick of all smallness, is roused to fury
by the obvious irritations of Pavel Petrovitch. Savagely announcing the
creed of nihilism and the end of romance, he has only to feel the calm,
aristocratic smile of Madame Odintsov fixed on him and he suffers all
the agony of first love. Determining to live and create, he has only to
play with death for a moment, and he is caught. But though he is the
most positive of all Turgenev's male portraits, there are others
linking up the chain of delusion. There is Rudin, typical of the unrest
of the idealist; there is Nezhdanov ("Virgin Soil"), typical of the
self-torture of the anarchist. There is Shubin ("On the Eve"), hiding
his misery in laughter, and Lavretsky ("A House of Gentlefolk"), hiding
his misery in silence. It is not necessary to search for further
examples. Turgenev put his hand upon the dark things. He perceived
character, struggling in the "clutch of circumstances," the tragic
moments, the horrible conflicts of personality. His figures have that
capability of suffering which (as someone has said) is the true sign of
life. They seem like real people, dazed and uncertain. No action of
theirs ever surprises you, because in each of them he has made you hear
an inward soliloquy.--From "Turgenev and the Life-Illusion," in "The
Fortnightly Review" (April, 1910).




V
BY MAURICE BARING


Turgenev did for Russian literature what Byron did for English
literature; he led the genius of Russia on a pilgrimage throughout all
Europe. And in Europe his work reaped a glorious harvest of praise.
Flaubert was astounded by him, George Sand looked up to him as to a
master, Taine spoke of his work as being the finest artistic production
since Sophocles. In Turgenev's work, Europe not only discovered
Turgenev, but it discovered Russia, the simplicity and the naturalness
of the Russian character; and this came as a revelation. For the first
time Europe came across the Russian woman whom Pushkin was the first to
paint; for the first time Europe came into contact with the Russian
soul; and it was the sharpness of this revelation which accounts for
the fact of Turgenev having received in the west an even greater meed
of praise than he was perhaps entitled to.

In Russia Turgenev attained almost instant popularity. His "Sportsman's
Sketches" and his "Nest of Gentlefolk" made him not only famous but
universally popular. In 1862 the publication of his masterpiece
"Fathers and Children" dealt his reputation a blow. The revolutionary
elements in Russia regarded his hero, Bazarov, as a calumny and a
libel; whereas the reactionary elements in Russia looked upon "Fathers
and Children" as a glorification of Nihilism. Thus he satisfied nobody.
He fell between two stools. This, perhaps, could only happen in Russia
to this extent; and for that same reason as that which made Russian
criticism didactic. The conflicting elements of Russian society were so
terribly in earnest in fighting their cause, that anyone whom they did
not regard as definitely for them was at once considered an enemy, and
an impartial delineation of any character concerned in the political
struggle was bound to displease both parties. If a novelist drew a
Nihilist, he must be one or the other, a hero or a scoundrel, if either
the revolutionaries or the reactionaries were to be pleased. If in
England the militant suffragists suddenly had a huge mass of educated
opinion behind them and a still larger mass of educated public opinion
against them, and some one were to draw in a novel an impartial picture
of a suffragette, the same thing would happen. On a small scale, as far
as the suffragettes are concerned, it has happened in the case of Mr.
Wells. But if Turgenev's popularity suffered a shock in Russia from
which it with difficulty recovered, in western Europe it went on
increasing. Especially in England, Turgenev became the idol of all that
was eclectic, and admiration for Turgenev a hallmark of good taste....

"Fathers and Children" is as beautifully constructed as a drama of
Sophocles; the events move inevitably to a tragic close. There is not a
touch of banality from beginning to end, and not an unnecessary word;
the portraits of the old father and mother, the young Kirsanov, and all
the minor characters are perfect; and amidst the trivial crowd Bazarov
stands out like Lucifer, the strongest--the only strong character--that
Turgenev created, the first Nihilist--for if Turgenev was not the first
to invent the word, he was the first to apply it in this sense.

Bazarov is the incarnation of the Lucifer type that recurs again and
again in Russian history and fiction, in sharp contrast to the meek,
humble type of Ivan Durak. Lermontov's Pechorin was in some respects an
anticipation of Bazarov; so were the many Russian rebels. He is the man
who denies, to whom art is a silly toy, who detests abstractions,
knowledge, and the love of Nature; he believes in nothing; he bows to
nothing; he can break, but he cannot bend; he does break, and that is
the tragedy, but, breaking, he retains his invincible pride, and

  "not cowardly puts off his helmet,"

and he dies "valiantly vanquished."

In the pages which describe his death Turgenev reaches the high-water
mark of his art, his moving quality, his power, his reserve. For manly
pathos they rank among the greatest scenes in literature, stronger than
the death of Colonel Newcome and the best of Thackeray. Among English
novelists it is, perhaps, only Meredith who has struck such strong,
piercing chords, nobler than anything in Daudet or Maupassant, more
reserved than anything in Victor Hugo, and worthy of the great poets,
of the tragic pathos of Goethe and Dante. The character of Bazarov, as
has been said, created a sensation and endless controversy. The
revolutionaries thought him a caricature and a libel, the reactionaries
a scandalous glorification of the Devil; and impartial men such as
Dostoevsky, who knew the revolutionaries at first hand, thought the
type unreal. It is impossible that Bazarov was not like the Nihilists
of the sixties; but in any case as a figure in fiction, whatever the
fact may be, he lives and will continue to live....--From "An Outline
of Russian Literature" (1914).




LIST OF CHARACTERS


NIKOLAI PETROVITCH KIRSANOV, a landowner.

PAVEL PETROVITCH KIRSANOV, his brother.

ARKADY (ARKASHA) NIKOLAEVITCH (_or_ NIKOLAITCH), his son.

YEVGENY (ENYUSHA) VASSILYEVITCH (_or_ VASSILYITCH) BAZAROV, friend of
Arkady.

VASSILY IVANOVITCH (_or_ IVANITCH), father of Bazarov.

ARINA VLASYEVNA, mother of Bazarov.

FEDOSYA (FENITCHKA) NIKOLAEVNA, second wife of Nikolai.

ANNA SERGYEVNA ODINTSOV, a wealthy widow.

KATYA SERGYEVNA, her sister.

PORFIRY PLATONITCH, her neighbor.

MATVY ILYITCH KOLYAZIN, government commissioner.

EVDOKSYA (_or_ AVDOTYA) NIKITISHNA KUKSHIN, an emancipated lady.

VIKTOR SITNIKOV, a would-be liberal.

PIOTR (_pron. P-yotr_), servant to Nikolai.

PROKOFITCH, head servant to Nikolai.

DUNYASHA, a maid servant.

MITYA, infant of Fedosya.

TIMOFEITCH, manager for Vassily.




FATHERS AND CHILDREN
A NOVEL




CHAPTER I


'Well, Piotr, not in sight yet?' was the question asked on May the
20th, 1859, by a gentleman of a little over forty, in a dusty coat and
checked trousers, who came out without his hat on to the low steps of
the posting station at S----. He was addressing his servant, a chubby
young fellow, with whitish down on his chin, and little, lack-lustre
eyes.

The servant, in whom everything--the turquoise ring in his ear, the
streaky hair plastered with grease, and the civility of his
movements--indicated a man of the new, improved generation, glanced
with an air of indulgence along the road, and made answer:

'No, sir; not in sight.'

'Not in sight?' repeated his master.

'No, sir,' responded the man a second time.

His master sighed, and sat down on a little bench. We will introduce
him to the reader while he sits, his feet tucked under him, gazing
thoughtfully round.

His name was Nikolai Petrovitch Kirsanov. He had, twelve miles from the
posting station, a fine property of two hundred souls, or, as he
expressed it--since he had arranged the division of his land with the
peasants, and started 'a farm'--of nearly five thousand acres. His
father, a general in the army, who served in 1812, a coarse,
half-educated, but not ill-natured man, a typical Russian, had been in
harness all his life, first in command of a brigade, and then of a
division, and lived constantly in the provinces, where, by virtue of
his rank, he played a fairly important part. Nikolai Petrovitch was
born in the south of Russia like his elder brother, Pavel, of whom more
hereafter. He was educated at home till he was fourteen, surrounded by
cheap tutors, free-and-easy but toadying adjutants, and all the usual
regimental and staff set. His mother, one of the Kolyazin family, as a
girl called Agathe, but as a general's wife Agathokleya Kuzminishna
Kirsanov, was one of those military ladies who take their full share of
the duties and dignities of office. She wore gorgeous caps and rustling
silk dresses; in church she was the first to advance to the cross; she
talked a great deal in a loud voice, let her children kiss her hand in
the morning, and gave them her blessing at night--in fact, she got
everything out of life she could. Nikolai Petrovitch, as a general's
son--though so far from being distinguished by courage that he even
deserved to be called 'a funk'--was intended, like his brother Pavel,
to enter the army; but he broke his leg on the very day when the news
of his commission came, and, after being two months in bed, retained a
slight limp to the end of his days. His father gave him up as a bad
job, and let him go into the civil service. He took him to Petersburg
directly he was eighteen, and placed him in the university. His brother
happened about the same time to be made an officer in the Guards. The
young men started living together in one set of rooms, under the remote
supervision of a cousin on their mother's side, Ilya Kolyazin, an
official of high rank. Their father returned to his division and his
wife, and only rarely sent his sons large sheets of grey paper,
scrawled over in a bold clerkly hand. At the bottom of these sheets
stood in letters, enclosed carefully in scroll-work, the words, 'Piotr
Kirsanov, General-Major.' In 1835 Nikolai Petrovitch left the
university, a graduate, and in the same year General Kirsanov was put
on to the retired list after an unsuccessful review, and came to
Petersburg with his wife to live. He was about to take a house in the
Tavrichesky Gardens, and had joined the English club, but he died
suddenly of an apoplectic fit. Agathokleya Kuzminishna soon followed
him; she could not accustom herself to a dull life in the capital; she
was consumed by the ennui of existence away from the regiment.
Meanwhile Nikolai Petrovitch had already, in his parents' lifetime and
to their no slight chagrin, had time to fall in love with the daughter
of his landlord, a petty official, Prepolovensky. She was a pretty and,
as it is called, 'advanced' girl; she used to read the serious articles
in the 'Science' column of the journals. He married her directly the
term of mourning was over; and leaving the civil service in which his
father had by favour procured him a post, was perfectly blissful with
his Masha, first in a country villa near the Lyesny Institute,
afterwards in town in a pretty little flat with a clean staircase and a
draughty drawing-room, and then in the country, where he settled
finally, and where in a short time a son, Arkady, was born to him. The
young couple lived very happily and peacefully; they were scarcely ever
apart; they read together, sang and played duets together on the piano;
she tended her flowers and looked after the poultry-yard; he sometimes
went hunting, and busied himself with the estate, while Arkady grew and
grew in the same happy and peaceful way. Ten years passed like a dream.
In 1847 Kirsanov's wife died. He almost succumbed to this blow; in a
few weeks his hair was grey; he was getting ready to go abroad, if
possible to distract his mind ... but then came the year 1848. He
returned unwillingly to the country, and, after a rather prolonged
period of inactivity, began to take an interest in improvements in the
management of his land. In 1855 he brought his son to the university;
he spent three winters with him in Petersburg, hardly going out
anywhere, and trying to make acquaintance with Arkady's young
companions. The last winter he had not been able to go, and here we
have him in the May of 1859, already quite grey, stoutish, and rather
bent, waiting for his son, who had just taken his degree, as once he
had taken it himself.

The servant, from a feeling of propriety, and perhaps, too, not anxious
to remain under the master's eye, had gone to the gate, and was smoking
a pipe. Nikolai Petrovitch bent his head, and began staring at the
crumbling steps; a big mottled fowl walked sedately towards him,
treading firmly with its great yellow legs; a muddy cat gave him an
unfriendly look, twisting herself coyly round the railing. The sun was
scorching; from the half-dark passage of the posting station came an
odour of hot rye-bread. Nikolai Petrovitch fell to dreaming. 'My son
... a graduate ... Arkasha ...' were the ideas that continually came
round again and again in his head; he tried to think of something else,
and again the same thoughts returned. He remembered his dead wife....
'She did not live to see it!' he murmured sadly. A plump, dark-blue
pigeon flew into the road, and hurriedly went to drink in a puddle near
the well. Nikolai Petrovitch began looking at it, but his ear had
already caught the sound of approaching wheels.

'It sounds as if they're coming sir,' announced the servant, popping in
from the gateway.

Nikolai Petrovitch jumped up, and bent his eyes on the road. A carriage
appeared with three posting-horses harnessed abreast; in the carriage
he caught a glimpse of the blue band of a student's cap, the familiar
outline of a dear face.

'Arkasha! Arkasha!' cried Kirsanov, and he ran waving his hands.... A
few instants later, his lips were pressed to the beardless, dusty,
sunburnt-cheek of the youthful graduate.




CHAPTER II


'Let me shake myself first, daddy,' said Arkady, in a voice tired from
travelling, but boyish and clear as a bell, as he gaily responded to
his father's caresses; 'I am covering you with dust.'

'Never mind, never mind,' repeated Nikolai Petrovitch, smiling
tenderly, and twice he struck the collar of his son's cloak and his own
greatcoat with his hand. 'Let me have a look at you; let me have a look
at you,' he added, moving back from him, but immediately he went with
hurried steps towards the yard of the station, calling, 'This way, this
way; and horses at once.'

Nikolai Petrovitch seemed far more excited than his son; he seemed a
little confused, a little timid. Arkady stopped him.

'Daddy,' he said, 'let me introduce you to my great friend, Bazarov,
about whom I have so often written to you. He has been so good as to
promise to stay with us.'

Nikolai Petrovitch went back quickly, and going up to a tall man in a
long, loose, rough coat with tassels, who had only just got out of the
carriage, he warmly pressed the ungloved red hand, which the latter did
not at once hold out to him.

'I am heartily glad,' he began, 'and very grateful for your kind
intention of visiting us.... Let me know your name, and your father's.'

'Yevgeny Vassilyev,' answered Bazarov, in a lazy but manly voice; and
turning back the collar of his rough coat, he showed Nikolai Petrovitch
his whole face. It was long and lean, with a broad forehead, a nose
flat at the base and sharper at the end, large greenish eyes, and
drooping whiskers of a sandy colour; it was lighted up by a tranquil
smile, and showed self-confidence and intelligence.

'I hope, dear Yevgeny Vassilyitch, you won't be dull with us,'
continued Nikolai Petrovitch.

Bazarov's thin lips moved just perceptibly, though he made no reply,
but merely took off his cap. His long, thick hair did not hide the
prominent bumps on his head.

'Then, Arkady,' Nikolai Petrovitch began again, turning to his son,
'shall the horses be put to at once? or would you like to rest?'

'We will rest at home, daddy; tell them to harness the horses.'

'At once, at once,' his father assented. 'Hey, Piotr, do you hear? Get
things ready, my good boy; look sharp.'

Piotr, who as a modernised servant had not kissed the young master's
hand, but only bowed to him from a distance, again vanished through the
gateway.

'I came here with the carriage, but there are three horses for your
coach too,' said Nikolai Petrovitch fussily, while Arkady drank some
water from an iron dipper brought him by the woman in charge of the
station, and Bazarov began smoking a pipe and went up to the driver,
who was taking out the horses; 'there are only two seats in the
carriage, and I don't know how your friend' ...

'He will go in the coach,' interposed Arkady in an undertone. 'You must
not stand on ceremony with him, please. He's a splendid fellow, so
simple--you will see.'

Nikolai Petrovitch's coachman brought the horses round.

'Come, hurry up, bushy beard!' said Bazarov, addressing the driver.

'Do you hear, Mityuha,' put in another driver, standing by with his
hands thrust behind him into the opening of his sheepskin coat, 'what
the gentleman called you? It's a bushy beard you are too.'

Mityuha only gave a jog to his hat and pulled the reins off the heated
shaft-horse.

'Look sharp, look sharp, lads, lend a hand,' cried Nikolai Petrovitch;
'there'll be something to drink our health with!'

In a few minutes the horses were harnessed; the father and son were
installed in the carriage; Piotr climbed up on to the box; Bazarov
jumped into the coach, and nestled his head down into the leather
cushion; and both the vehicles rolled away.




CHAPTER III


'So here you are, a graduate at last, and come home again,' said
Nikolai Petrovitch, touching Arkady now on the shoulder, now on the
knee. 'At last!'

'And how is uncle? quite well?' asked Arkady, who, in spite of the
genuine, almost childish delight filling his heart, wanted as soon as
possible to turn the conversation from the emotional into a commonplace
channel.

'Quite well. He was thinking of coming with me to meet you, but for
some reason or other he gave up the idea.'

'And how long have you been waiting for me?' inquired Arkady.

'Oh, about five hours.'

'Dear old dad!'

Arkady turned round quickly to his father, and gave him a sounding kiss
on the cheek. Nikolai Petrovitch gave vent to a low chuckle.

'I have got such a capital horse for you!' he began. 'You will see. And
your room has been fresh papered.'

'And is there a room for Bazarov?'

'We will find one for him too.'

'Please, dad, make much of him. I can't tell you how I prize his
friendship.'

'Have you made friends with him lately?'

'Yes, quite lately.'

'Ah, that's how it is I did not see him last winter. What does he
study?'

'His chief subject is natural science. But he knows everything. Next
year he wants to take his doctor's degree.'

'Ah! he's in the medical faculty,' observed Nikolai Petrovitch, and he
was silent for a little. 'Piotr,' he went on, stretching out his hand,
'aren't those our peasants driving along?'

Piotr looked where his master was pointing. Some carts harnessed with
unbridled horses were moving rapidly along a narrow by-road. In each
cart there were one or two peasants in sheepskin coats, unbuttoned.

'Yes, sir,' replied Piotr.

'Where are they going,--to the town?'

'To the town, I suppose. To the gin-shop,' he added contemptuously,
turning slightly towards the coachman, as though he would appeal to
him. But the latter did not stir a muscle; he was a man of the old
stamp, and did not share the modern views of the younger generation.

'I have had a lot of bother with the peasants this year,' pursued
Nikolai Petrovitch, turning to his son. 'They won't pay their rent.
What is one to do?'

'But do you like your hired labourers?'

'Yes,' said Nikolai Petrovitch between his teeth. 'They're being set
against me, that's the mischief; and they don't do their best. They
spoil the tools. But they have tilled the land pretty fairly. When
things have settled down a bit, it will be all right. Do you take an
interest in farming now?'

'You've no shade; that's a pity,' remarked Arkady, without answering
the last question.

'I have had a great awning put up on the north side over the balcony,'
observed Nikolai Petrovitch; 'now we can have dinner even in the open
air.'

'It'll be rather too like a summer villa.... Still, that's all
nonsense. What air though here! How delicious it smells! Really I fancy
there's nowhere such fragrance in the world as in the meadows here! And
the sky too.'

Arkady suddenly stopped short, cast a stealthy look behind him, and
said no more.

'Of course,' observed Nikolai Petrovitch, 'you were born here, and so
everything is bound to strike you in a special----'

'Come, dad, that makes no difference where a man is born.'

'Still----'

'No; it makes absolutely no difference.'

Nikolai Petrovitch gave a sidelong glance at his son, and the carriage
went on a half-a-mile further before the conversation was renewed
between them.

'I don't recollect whether I wrote to you,' began Nikolai Petrovitch,
'your old nurse, Yegorovna, is dead.'

'Really? Poor thing! Is Prokofitch still living?'

'Yes, and not a bit changed. As grumbling as ever. In fact, you won't
find many changes at Maryino.'

'Have you still the same bailiff?'

'Well, to be sure there is a change there. I decided not to keep about
me any freed serfs, who have been house servants, or, at least, not to
intrust them with duties of any responsibility.' (Arkady glanced
towards Piotr.) '_Il est libre, en effet_,' observed Nikolai Petrovitch
in an undertone; 'but, you see, he's only a valet. Now I have a
bailiff, a townsman; he seems a practical fellow. I pay him two hundred
and fifty roubles a year. But,' added Nikolai Petrovitch, rubbing his
forehead and eyebrows with his hand, which was always an indication
with him of inward embarrassment, 'I told you just now that you would
not find changes at Maryino.... That's not quite correct. I think it my
duty to prepare you, though....'

He hesitated for an instant, and then went on in French.

'A severe moralist would regard my openness, as improper; but, in the
first place, it can't be concealed, and secondly, you are aware I have
always had peculiar ideas as regards the relation of father and son.
Though, of course, you would be right in blaming me. At my age.... In
short ... that ... that girl, about whom you have probably heard
already ...'

'Fenitchka?' asked Arkady easily.

Nikolai Petrovitch blushed. 'Don't mention her name aloud, please....
Well ... she is living with me now. I have installed her in the house
... there were two little rooms there. But that can all be changed.'

'Goodness, daddy, what for?'

'Your friend is going to stay with us ... it would be awkward ...'

'Please don't be uneasy on Bazarov's account. He's above all that.'

'Well, but you too,' added Nikolai Petrovitch. 'The little lodge is so
horrid--that's the worst of it.'

'Goodness, dad,' interposed Arkady, 'it's as if you were apologising; I
wonder you're not ashamed.'

'Of course, I ought to be ashamed,' answered Nikolai Petrovitch,
flushing more and more.

'Nonsense, dad, nonsense; please don't!' Arkady smiled affectionately.
'What a thing to apologise for!' he thought to himself, and his heart
was filled with a feeling of condescending tenderness for his kind,
soft-hearted father, mixed with a sense of secret superiority. 'Please,
stop,' he repeated once more, instinctively revelling in a
consciousness of his own advanced and emancipated condition.

Nikolai Petrovitch glanced at him from under the fingers of the hand
with which he was still rubbing his forehead, and there was a pang in
his heart.... But at once he blamed himself for it.

'Here are our meadows at last,' he said after a long silence.

'And that in front is our forest, isn't it?' asked Arkady.

'Yes. Only I have sold the timber. This year they will cut it down.'

'Why did you sell it?'

'The money was needed; besides, that land is to go to the peasants.'

'Who don't pay you their rent?'

'That's their affair; besides, they will pay it some day.'

'I am sorry about the forest,' observed Arkady, and he began to look
about him.

The country through which they were driving could not be called
picturesque. Fields upon fields stretched all along to the very
horizon, now sloping gently upwards, then dropping down again; in some
places woods were to be seen, and winding ravines, planted with low,
scanty bushes, recalling vividly the representation of them on the
old-fashioned maps of the times of Catherine. They came upon little
streams too with hollow banks; and tiny lakes with narrow dykes; and
little villages, with low hovels under dark and often tumble-down
roofs, and slanting barns with walls woven of brushwood and gaping
doorways beside neglected threshing-floors; and churches, some
brick-built, with stucco peeling off in patches, others wooden, with
crosses fallen askew, and overgrown grave-yards. Slowly Arkady's heart
sunk. To complete the picture, the peasants they met were all in
tatters and on the sorriest little nags; the willows, with their trunks
stripped of bark, and broken branches, stood like ragged beggars along
the roadside; cows lean and shaggy and looking pinched up by hunger,
were greedily tearing at the grass along the ditches. They looked as
though they had just been snatched out of the murderous clutches of
some threatening monster; and the piteous state of the weak, starved
beasts in the midst of the lovely spring day, called up, like a white
phantom, the endless, comfortless winter with its storms, and frosts,
and snows.... 'No,' thought Arkady, 'this is not a rich country; it
does not impress one by plenty or industry; it can't, it can't go on
like this, reforms are absolutely necessary ... but how is one to carry
them out, how is one to begin?'

Such were Arkady's reflections; ... but even as he reflected, the
spring regained its sway. All around was golden green, all--trees,
bushes, grass--shone and stirred gently in wide waves under the soft
breath of the warm wind; from all sides flooded the endless trilling
music of the larks; the peewits were calling as they hovered over the
low-lying meadows, or noiselessly ran over the tussocks of grass; the
rooks strutted among the half-grown short spring-corn, standing out
black against its tender green; they disappeared in the already
whitening rye, only from time to time their heads peeped out amid its
grey waves. Arkady gazed and gazed, and his reflections grew slowly
fainter and passed away.... He flung off his cloak and turned to his
father, with a face so bright and boyish, that the latter gave him
another hug.

'We're not far off now,' remarked Nikolai Petrovitch; 'we have only to
get up this hill, and the house will be in sight. We shall get on
together splendidly, Arkasha; you shall help me in farming the estate,
if only it isn't a bore to you. We must draw close to one another now,
and learn to know each other thoroughly, mustn't we!'

'Of course,' said Arkady; 'but what an exquisite day it is to-day!'

'To welcome you, my dear boy. Yes, it's spring in its full loveliness.
Though I agree with Pushkin--do you remember in Yevgeny Onyegin--

  'To me how sad thy coming is,
   Spring, spring, sweet time of love!
   What ...'

'Arkady!' called Bazarov's voice from the coach, 'send me a match; I've
nothing to light my pipe with.'

Nikolai Petrovitch stopped, while Arkady, who had begun listening to
him with some surprise, though with sympathy too, made haste to pull a
silver matchbox out of his pocket, and sent it to Bazarov by Piotr.

'Will you have a cigar?' shouted Bazarov again.

'Thanks,' answered Arkady.

Piotr returned to the carriage, and handed him with the match-box a
thick black cigar, which Arkady began to smoke promptly, diffusing
about him such a strong and pungent odour of cheap tobacco, that
Nikolai Petrovitch, who had never been a smoker from his youth up, was
forced to turn away his head, as imperceptibly as he could for fear of
wounding his son.

A quarter of an hour later, the two carriages drew up before the steps
of a new wooden house, painted grey, with a red iron roof. This was
Maryino, also known as New-Wick, or, as the peasants had nicknamed it,
Poverty Farm.




CHAPTER IV


No crowd of house-serfs ran out on to the steps to meet the gentlemen;
a little girl of twelve years old made her appearance alone. After her
there came out of the house a young lad, very like Piotr, dressed in a
coat of grey livery, with white armorial buttons, the servant of Pavel
Petrovitch Kirsanov. Without speaking, he opened the door of the
carriage, and unbuttoned the apron of the coach. Nikolai Petrovitch
with his son and Bazarov walked through a dark and almost empty hall,
from behind the door of which they caught a glimpse of a young woman's
face, into a drawing-room furnished in the most modern style.

'Here we are at home,' said Nikolai Petrovitch, taking off his cap, and
shaking back his hair. 'That's the great thing; now we must have supper
and rest.'

'A meal would not come amiss, certainly,' observed Bazarov, stretching,
and he dropped on to a sofa.

'Yes, yes, let us have supper, supper directly.' Nikolai Petrovitch
with no apparent reason stamped his foot. 'And here just at the right
moment comes Prokofitch.'

A man about sixty entered, white-haired, thin, and swarthy, in a
cinnamon-coloured dress-coat with brass buttons, and a pink
neckerchief. He smirked, went up to kiss Arkady's hand, and bowing to
the guest retreated to the door, and put his hands behind him.

'Here he is, Prokofitch,' began Nikolai Petrovitch; 'he's come back to
us at last.... Well, how do you think him looking?'

'As well as could be,' said the old man, and was grinning again, but he
quickly knitted his bushy brows. 'You wish supper to be served?' he
said impressively.

'Yes, yes, please. But won't you like to go to your room first, Yevgeny
Vassilyitch?'

'No, thanks; I don't care about it. Only give orders for my little box
to be taken there, and this garment, too,' he added, taking off his
frieze overcoat.

'Certainly. Prokofitch, take the gentleman's coat.' (Prokofitch, with
an air of perplexity, picked up Bazarov's 'garment' in both hands, and
holding it high above his head, retreated on tiptoe.) 'And you, Arkady,
are you going to your room for a minute?'

'Yes, I must wash,' answered Arkady, and was just moving towards the
door, but at that instant there came into the drawing-room a man of
medium height, dressed in a dark English suit, a fashionable low
cravat, and kid shoes, Pavel Petrovitch Kirsanov. He looked about
forty-five: his close-cropped, grey hair shone with a dark lustre, like
new silver; his face, yellow but free from wrinkles, was exceptionally
regular and pure in line, as though carved by a light and delicate
chisel, and showed traces of remarkable beauty; specially fine were his
clear, black, almond-shaped eyes. The whole person of Arkady's uncle,
with its aristocratic elegance, had preserved the gracefulness of youth
and that air of striving upwards, away from earth, which for the most
part is lost after the twenties are past.

Pavel Petrovitch took out of his trouser pocket his exquisite hand with
its long tapering pink nails, a hand which seemed still more exquisite
from the snowy whiteness of the cuff, buttoned with a single, big opal,
and gave it to his nephew. After a preliminary handshake in the
European style, he kissed him thrice after the Russian fashion, that is
to say, he touched his cheek three times with his perfumed moustaches,
and said, 'Welcome.'

Nikolai Petrovitch presented him to Bazarov; Pavel Petrovitch greeted
him with a slight inclination of his supple figure, and a slight smile,
but he did not give him his hand, and even put it back into his pocket.

'I had begun to think you were not coming to-day,' he began in a
musical voice, with a genial swing and shrug of the shoulders, as he
showed his splendid white teeth. 'Did anything happen on the road.'

'Nothing happened,' answered Arkady; 'we were rather slow. But we're as
hungry as wolves now. Hurry up Prokofitch, dad; and I'll be back
directly.'

'Stay, I'm coming with you,' cried Bazarov, pulling himself up suddenly
from the sofa. Both the young men went out.

'Who is he?' asked Pavel Petrovitch.

'A friend of Arkasha's; according to him, a very clever fellow.'

'Is he going to stay with us?'

'Yes.'

'That unkempt creature?'

'Why, yes.'

Pavel Petrovitch drummed with his finger tips on the table. 'I fancy
Arkady _s'est dégourdi_,' he remarked. 'I'm glad he has come back.'

At supper there was little conversation. Bazarov especially said
nothing, but he ate a great deal. Nikolai Petrovitch related various
incidents in what he called his career as a farmer, talked about the
impending government measures, about committees, deputations, the
necessity of introducing machinery, etc. Pavel Petrovitch paced slowly
up and down the dining-room (he never ate supper), sometimes sipping at
a wineglass of red wine, and less often uttering some remark or rather
exclamation, of the nature of 'Ah! aha! hm!' Arkady told some news from
Petersburg, but he was conscious of a little awkwardness, that
awkwardness, which usually overtakes a youth when he has just ceased to
be a child, and has come back to a place where they are accustomed to
regard him and treat him as a child. He made his sentences quite
unnecessarily long, avoided the word 'daddy,' and even sometimes
replaced it by the word 'father,' mumbled, it is true, between his
teeth; with an exaggerated carelessness he poured into his glass far
more wine than he really wanted, and drank it all off. Prokofitch did
not take his eyes off him, and kept chewing his lips. After supper they
all separated at once.

'Your uncle's a queer fish,' Bazarov said to Arkady, as he sat in his
dressing-gown by his bedside, smoking a short pipe. 'Only fancy such
style in the country! His nails, his nails--you ought to send them to
an exhibition!'

'Why of course, you don't know,' replied Arkady. 'He was a great swell
in his own day, you know. I will tell you his story one day. He was
very handsome, you know, used to turn all the women's heads.'

'Oh, that's it, is it? So he keeps it up in memory of the past. It's a
pity there's no one for him to fascinate here though. I kept staring at
his exquisite collars. They're like marble, and his chin's shaved
simply to perfection. Come, Arkady Nikolaitch, isn't that ridiculous?'

'Perhaps it is; but he's a splendid man, really.'

'An antique survival! But your father's a capital fellow. He wastes his
time reading poetry, and doesn't know much about farming, but he's a
good-hearted fellow.'

'My father's a man in a thousand.'

'Did you notice how shy and nervous he is?'

Arkady shook his head as though he himself were not shy and nervous.

'It's something astonishing,' pursued Bazarov, 'these old idealists,
they develop their nervous systems till they break down ... so balance
is lost. But good-night. In my room there's an English washstand, but
the door won't fasten. Anyway that ought to be encouraged--an English
washstand stands for progress!'

Bazarov went away, and a sense of great happiness came over Arkady.
Sweet it is to fall asleep in one's own home, in the familiar bed,
under the quilt worked by loving hands, perhaps a dear nurse's hands,
those kind, tender, untiring hands. Arkady remembered Yegorovna, and
sighed and wished her peace in heaven.... For himself he made no
prayer.

Both he and Bazarov were soon asleep, but others in the house were
awake long after. His son's return had agitated Nikolai Petrovitch. He
lay down in bed, but did not put out the candles, and his head propped
on his hand, he fell into long reveries. His brother was sitting long
after midnight in his study, in a wide armchair before the fireplace,
on which there smouldered some faintly glowing embers. Pavel Petrovitch
was not undressed, only some red Chinese slippers had replaced the kid
shoes on his feet. He held in his hand the last number of _Galignani_,
but he was not reading; he gazed fixedly into the grate, where a bluish
flame flickered, dying down, then flaring up again.... God knows where
his thoughts were rambling, but they were not rambling in the past
only; the expression of his face was concentrated and surly, which is
not the way when a man is absorbed solely in recollections. In a small
back room there sat, on a large chest, a young woman in a blue dressing
jacket with a white kerchief thrown over her dark hair, Fenitchka. She
was half listening, half dozing, and often looked across towards the
open door through which a child's cradle was visible, and the regular
breathing of a sleeping baby could be heard.




CHAPTER V


The next morning Bazarov woke up earlier than any one and went out of
the house. 'Oh, my!' he thought, looking about him, 'the little place
isn't much to boast of!' When Nikolai Petrovitch had divided the land
with his peasants, he had had to build his new manor-house on four
acres of perfectly flat and barren land. He had built a house, offices,
and farm buildings, laid out a garden, dug a pond, and sunk two wells;
but the young trees had not done well, very little water had collected
in the pond, and that in the wells tasted brackish. Only one arbour of
lilac and acacia had grown fairly well; they sometimes had tea and
dinner in it. In a few minutes Bazarov had traversed all the little
paths of the garden; he went into the cattle-yard and the stable,
routed out two farm-boys, with whom he made friends at once, and set
off with them to a small swamp about a mile from the house to look for
frogs.

'What do you want frogs for, sir?' one of the boys asked him.

'I'll tell you what for,' answered Bazarov, who possessed the special
faculty of inspiring confidence in people of a lower class, though he
never tried to win them, and behaved very casually with them; 'I shall
cut the frog open, and see what's going on in his inside, and then, as
you and I are much the same as frogs, only that we walk on legs, I
shall know what's going on inside us too.'

'And what do you want to know that for?'

'So as not to make a mistake, if you're taken ill, and I have to cure
you.'

'Are you a doctor then?'

'Yes.'

'Vaska, do you hear, the gentleman says you and I are the same as
frogs, that's funny!'

'I'm afraid of frogs,' observed Vaska, a boy of seven, with a head as
white as flax, and bare feet, dressed in a grey smock with a stand-up
collar.

'What is there to be afraid of? Do they bite?'

'There, paddle into the water, philosophers,' said Bazarov.

Meanwhile Nikolai Petrovitch too had waked up, and gone in to see
Arkady, whom he found dressed. The father and son went out on to the
terrace under the shelter of the awning; near the balustrade, on the
table, among great bunches of lilacs, the samovar was already boiling.
A little girl came up, the same who had been the first to meet them at
the steps on their arrival the evening before. In a shrill voice she
said--

'Fedosya Nikolaevna is not quite well, she cannot come; she gave orders
to ask you, will you please to pour out tea yourself, or should she
send Dunyasha?'

'I will pour out myself, myself,' interposed Nikolai Petrovitch
hurriedly. 'Arkady, how do you take your tea, with cream, or with
lemon?'

'With cream,' answered Arkady; and after a brief silence, he uttered
interrogatively, 'Daddy?'

Nikolai Petrovitch in confusion looked at his son.

'Well?' he said.

Arkady dropped his eyes.

'Forgive me, dad, if my question seems unsuitable to you,' he began,
'but you yourself, by your openness yesterday, encourage me to be open
... you will not be angry ...?'

'Go on.'

'You give me confidence to ask you.... Isn't the reason, Fen ... isn't
the reason she will not come here to pour out tea, because I'm here?'

Nikolai Petrovitch turned slightly away.

'Perhaps,' he said, at last, 'she supposes ... she is ashamed.'

Arkady turned a rapid glance on his father.

'She has no need to be ashamed. In the first place, you are aware of my
views' (it was very sweet to Arkady to utter that word); 'and secondly,
could I be willing to hamper your life, your habits in the least thing?
Besides, I am sure you could not make a bad choice; if you have allowed
her to live under the same roof with you, she must be worthy of it; in
any case, a son cannot judge his father,--least of all, I, and least of
all such a father who, like you, has never hampered my liberty in
anything.'

Arkady's voice had been shaky at the beginning; he felt himself
magnanimous, though at the same time he realised he was delivering
something of the nature of a lecture to his father; but the sound of
one's own voice has a powerful effect on any man, and Arkady brought
out his last words resolutely, even with emphasis.

'Thanks, Arkasha,' said Nikolai Petrovitch thickly, and his fingers
again strayed over his eyebrows and forehead. 'Your suppositions are
just in fact. Of course, if this girl had not deserved.... It is not a
frivolous caprice. It's not easy for me to talk to you about this; but
you will understand that it is difficult for her to come here, in your
presence, especially the first day of your return.'

'In that case I will go to her,' cried Arkady, with a fresh rush of
magnanimous feeling, and he jumped up from his seat. 'I will explain to
her that she has no need to be ashamed before me.'

Nikolai Petrovitch too got up.

'Arkady,' he began, 'be so good ... how can ... there ... I have not
told you yet ...'

But Arkady did not listen to him, and ran off the terrace. Nikolai
Petrovitch looked after him, and sank into his chair overcome by
confusion. His heart began to throb. Did he at that moment realise the
inevitable strangeness of the future relations between him and his son?
Was he conscious that Arkady would perhaps have shown him more respect
if he had never touched on this subject at all? Did he reproach himself
for weakness?--it is hard to say; all these feelings were within him,
but in the state of sensations--and vague sensations--while the flush
did not leave his face, and his heart throbbed.

There was the sound of hurrying footsteps, and Arkady came on to the
terrace. 'We have made friends, dad!' he cried, with an expression of a
kind of affectionate and good-natured triumph on his face. 'Fedosya
Nikolaevna is not quite well to-day really, and she will come a little
later. But why didn't you tell me I had a brother? I should have kissed
him last night, as I have kissed him just now.'

Nikolai Petrovitch tried to articulate something, tried to get up and
open his arms. Arkady flung himself on his neck.

'What's this? embracing again?' sounded the voice of Pavel Petrovitch
behind them.

Father and son were equally rejoiced at his appearance at that instant;
there are positions, genuinely affecting, from which one longs to
escape as soon as possible.

'Why should you be surprised at that?' said Nikolai Petrovitch gaily.
'Think what ages I have been waiting for Arkasha. I've not had time to
get a good look at him since yesterday.'

'I'm not at all surprised,' observed Pavel Petrovitch; 'I feel not
indisposed to be embracing him myself.'

Arkady went up to his uncle, and again felt his cheeks caressed by his
perfumed moustache. Pavel Petrovitch sat down to the table. He wore an
elegant morning suit in the English style, and a gay little fez on his
head. This fez and the carelessly tied little cravat carried a
suggestion of the freedom of country life, but the stiff collars of his
shirt--not white, it is true, but striped, as is correct in morning
dress--stood up as inexorably as ever against his well-shaved chin.

'Where's your new friend?' he asked Arkady.

'He's not in the house; he usually gets up early and goes off
somewhere. The great thing is, we mustn't pay any attention to him; he
doesn't like ceremony.'

'Yes, that's obvious.' Pavel Petrovitch began deliberately spreading
butter on his bread. 'Is he going to stay long with us?'

'Perhaps. He came here on the way to his father's.'

'And where does his father live?'

'In our province, sixty-four miles from here. He has a small property
there. He was formerly an army doctor.'

'Tut, tut, tut! To be sure, I kept asking myself, "Where have I heard
that name, Bazarov?" Nikolai, do you remember, in our father's division
there was a surgeon Bazarov?'

'I believe there was.'

'Yes, yes, to be sure. So that surgeon was his father. Hm!' Pavel
Petrovitch pulled his moustaches. 'Well, and what is Mr. Bazarov
himself?' he asked, deliberately.

'What is Bazarov?' Arkady smiled. 'Would you like me, uncle, to tell
you what he really is?'

'If you will be so good, nephew.'

'He's a nihilist.'

'Eh?' inquired Nikolai Petrovitch, while Pavel Petrovitch lilted a
knife in the air with a small piece of butter on its tip, and remained
motionless.

'He's a nihilist,' repeated Arkady.

'A nihilist,' said Nikolai Petrovitch. 'That's from the Latin, _nihil_,
_nothing_, as far as I can judge; the word must mean a man who ... who
accepts nothing?'

'Say, "who respects nothing,"' put in Pavel Petrovitch, and he set to
work on the butter again.

'Who regards everything from the critical point of view,' observed
Arkady.

'Isn't that just the same thing?' inquired Pavel Petrovitch.

'No, it's not the same thing. A nihilist is a man who does not bow down
before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith,
whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in.'

'Well, and is that good?' interrupted Pavel Petrovitch.

'That depends, uncle. Some people it will do good to, but some people
will suffer for it.'

'Indeed. Well, I see it's not in our line. We are old-fashioned people;
we imagine that without principles, taken as you say on faith, there's
no taking a step, no breathing. _Vous avez changé tout cela_. God give
you good health and the rank of a general, while we will be content to
look on and admire, worthy ... what was it?'

'Nihilists,' Arkady said, speaking very distinctly.

'Yes. There used to be Hegelists, and now there are nihilists. We shall
see how you will exist in void, in vacuum; and now ring, please,
brother Nikolai Petrovitch; it's time I had my cocoa.'

Nikolai Petrovitch rang the bell and called, 'Dunyasha!' But instead of
Dunyasha, Fenitchka herself came on to the terrace. She was a young
woman about three-and-twenty, with a white soft skin, dark hair and
eyes, red, childishly-pouting lips, and little delicate hands. She wore
a neat print dress; a new blue kerchief lay lightly on her plump
shoulders. She carried a large cup of cocoa, and setting it down before
Pavel Petrovitch, she was overwhelmed with confusion: the hot blood
rushed in a wave of crimson over the delicate skin of her pretty face.
She dropped her eyes, and stood at the table, leaning a little on the
very tips of her fingers. It seemed as though she were ashamed of
having come in, and at the same time felt that she had a right to come.

Pavel Petrovitch knitted his brows severely, while Nikolai Petrovitch
looked embarrassed.

'Good morning, Fenitchka,' he muttered through his teeth.

'Good morning,' she replied in a voice not loud but resonant, and with
a sidelong glance at Arkady, who gave her a friendly smile, she went
gently away. She walked with a slightly rolling gait, but even that
suited her.

For some minutes silence reigned on the terrace. Pavel Petrovitch
sipped his cocoa; suddenly he raised his head. 'Here is Sir Nihilist
coming towards us,' he said in an undertone.

Bazarov was in fact approaching through the garden, stepping over the
flower-beds. His linen coat and trousers were besmeared with mud;
clinging marsh weed was twined round the crown of his old round hat; in
his right hand he held a small bag; in the bag something alive was
moving. He quickly drew near the terrace, and said with a nod, 'Good
morning, gentlemen; sorry I was late for tea; I'll be back directly; I
must just put these captives away.'

'What have you there--leeches?' asked Pavel Petrovitch.

'No, frogs.'

'Do you eat them--or keep them?'

'For experiment,' said Bazarov indifferently, and he went off into the
house.

'So he's going to cut them up,' observed Pavel Petrovitch. 'He has no
faith in principles, but he has faith in frogs.'

Arkady looked compassionately at his uncle; Nikolai Petrovitch shrugged
his shoulders stealthily. Pavel Petrovitch himself felt that his
epigram was unsuccessful, and began to talk about husbandry and the new
bailiff, who had come to him the evening before to complain that a
labourer, Foma, 'was deboshed,' and quite unmanageable. 'He's such an
Æsop,' he said among other things; 'in all places he has protested
himself a worthless fellow; he's not a man to keep his place; he'll
walk off in a huff like a fool.'




CHAPTER VI


Bazarov came back, sat down to the table, and began hastily drinking
tea. The two brothers looked at him in silence, while Arkady stealthily
watched first his father and then his uncle.

'Did you walk far from here?' Nikolai Petrovitch asked at last.

'Where you've a little swamp near the aspen wood. I started some
half-dozen snipe; you might slaughter them; Arkady.'

'Aren't you a sportsman then?'

'No.'

'Is your special study physics?' Pavel Petrovitch in his turn inquired.

'Physics, yes; and natural science in general.'

'They say the Teutons of late have had great success in that line.'

'Yes; the Germans are our teachers in it,' Bazarov answered carelessly.

The word Teutons instead of Germans, Pavel Petrovitch had used with
ironical intention; none noticed it however.

'Have you such a high opinion of the Germans?' said Pavel Petrovitch,
with exaggerated courtesy. He was beginning to feel a secret
irritation. His aristocratic nature was revolted by Bazarov's absolute
nonchalance. This surgeon's son was not only not overawed, he even gave
abrupt and indifferent answers, and in the tone of his voice there was
something churlish, almost insolent.

'The scientific men there are a clever lot.'

'Ah, ah. To be sure, of Russian scientific men you have not such a
flattering opinion, I dare say?'

'That is very likely.'

'That's very praiseworthy self-abnegation,' Pavel Petrovitch declared,
drawing himself up, and throwing his head back. 'But how is this?
Arkady Nikolaitch was telling us just now that you accept no
authorities? Don't you believe in _them_?'

'And how am I accepting them? And what am I to believe in? They tell me
the truth, I agree, that's all.'

'And do all Germans tell the truth?' said Pavel Petrovitch, and his
face assumed an expression as unsympathetic, as remote, as if he had
withdrawn to some cloudy height.

'Not all,' replied Bazarov, with a short yawn. He obviously did not
care to continue the discussion.

Pavel Petrovitch glanced at Arkady, as though he would say to him,
'Your friend's polite, I must say.' 'For my own part,' he began again,
not without some effort, 'I am so unregenerate as not to like Germans.
Russian Germans I am not speaking of now; we all know what sort of
creatures they are. But even German Germans are not to my liking. In
former days there were some here and there; they had--well, Schiller,
to be sure, Goethe ... my brother--he takes a particularly favourable
view of them.... But now they have all turned chemists and materialists
...'

'A good chemist is twenty times as useful as any poet,' broke in
Bazarov.

'Oh, indeed,' commented Pavel Petrovitch, and, as though falling
asleep, he faintly raised his eyebrows. 'You don't acknowledge art
then, I suppose?'

'The art of making money or of advertising pills!' cried Bazarov, with
a contemptuous laugh.

'Ah, ah. You are pleased to jest, I see. You reject all that, no doubt?
Granted. Then you believe in science only?'

'I have already explained to you that I don't believe in anything; and
what is science--science in the abstract? There are sciences, as there
are trades and crafts; but abstract science doesn't exist at all.'

'Very good. Well, and in regard to the other traditions accepted in
human conduct, do you maintain the same negative attitude?'

'What's this, an examination?' asked Bazarov.

Pavel Petrovitch turned slightly pale.... Nikolai Petrovitch thought it
his duty to interpose in the conversation.

'We will converse on this subject with you more in detail some day,
dear Yevgeny Vassilyitch; we will hear your views, and express our own.
For my part, I am heartily glad you are studying the natural sciences.
I have heard that Liebig has made some wonderful discoveries in the
amelioration of soils. You can be of assistance to me in my
agricultural labours; you can give me some useful advice.'

'I am at your service, Nikolai Petrovitch; but Liebig's miles over our
heads! One has first to learn the a b c, and then begin to read, and we
haven't set eyes on the alphabet yet.'

'You are certainly a nihilist, I see that,' thought Nikolai Petrovitch.
'Still, you will allow me to apply to you on occasion,' he added aloud.
'And now I fancy, brother, it's time for us to be going to have a talk
with the bailiff.'

Pavel Petrovitch got up from his seat.

'Yes,' he said, without looking at any one; 'it's a misfortune to live
five years in the country like this, far from mighty intellects! You
turn into a fool directly. You may try not to forget what you've been
taught, but--in a snap!--they'll prove all that's rubbish, and tell you
that sensible men have nothing more to do with such foolishness, and
that you, if you please, are an antiquated old fogey. What's to be
done? Young people, of course, are cleverer than we are!'

Pavel Petrovitch turned slowly on his heels, and slowly walked away;
Nikolai Petrovitch went after him.

'Is he always like that?' Bazarov coolly inquired of Arkady directly
the door had closed behind the two brothers.

'I must say, Yevgeny, you weren't nice to him,' remarked Arkady. 'You
have hurt his feelings.'

'Well, am I going to consider them, these provincial aristocrats! Why,
it's all vanity, dandy habits, fatuity. He should have continued his
career in Petersburg, if that's his bent. But there, enough of him!
I've found a rather rare species of a water-beetle, _Dytiscus
marginatus_; do you know it? I will show you.'

'I promised to tell you his story,' began Arkady.

'The story of the beetle?'

'Come, don't, Yevgeny. The story of my uncle. You will see he's not the
sort of man you fancy. He deserves pity rather than ridicule.'

'I don't dispute it; but why are you worrying over him?'

'One ought to be just, Yevgeny.'

'How does that follow?'

'No; listen ...'

And Arkady told him his uncle's story. The reader will find it in the
following chapter.




CHAPTER VII


Pavel Petrovitch Kirsanov was educated first at home, like his younger
brother, and afterwards in the Corps of Pages. From childhood he was
distinguished by remarkable beauty; moreover he was self-confident,
somewhat ironical, and had a rather biting humour; he could not fail to
please. He began to be seen everywhere, directly he had received his
commission as an officer. He was much admired in society, and he
indulged every whim, even every caprice and every folly, and gave
himself airs, but that too was attractive in him. Women went out of
their senses over him; men called him a coxcomb, and were secretly
jealous of him. He lived, as has been related already, in the same
apartments as his brother, whom he loved sincerely, though he was not
at all like him. Nikolai Petrovitch was a little lame, he had small,
pleasing features of a rather melancholy cast, small, black eyes, and
thin, soft hair; he liked being lazy, but he also liked reading, and
was timid in society.

Pavel Petrovitch did not spend a single evening at home, prided himself
on his ease and audacity (he was just bringing gymnastics into fashion
among young men in society), and had read in all some five or six
French books. At twenty-eight he was already a captain; a brilliant
career awaited him. Suddenly everything was changed.

At that time, there was sometimes seen in Petersburg society a woman
who has even yet not been forgotten. Princess R----. She had a
well-educated, well-bred, but rather stupid husband, and no children.
She used suddenly to go abroad, and suddenly return to Russia, and led
an eccentric life in general. She had the reputation of being a
frivolous coquette, abandoned herself eagerly to every sort of
pleasure, danced to exhaustion, laughed and jested with young men, whom
she received in the dim light of her drawing-room before dinner; while
at night she wept and prayed, found no peace in anything, and often
paced her room till morning, wringing her hands in anguish, or sat,
pale and chill, over a psalter. Day came, and she was transformed again
into a grand lady; again she went out, laughed, chattered, and simply
flung herself headlong into anything which could afford her the
slightest distraction. She was marvellously well-proportioned, her hair
coloured like gold and heavy as gold hung below her knees, but no one
would have called her a beauty; in her whole face the only good point
was her eyes, and even her eyes were not good--they were grey, and not
large--but their glance was swift and deep, unconcerned to the point of
audacity, and thoughtful to the point of melancholy--an enigmatic
glance. There was a light of something extraordinary in them, even
while her tongue was lisping the emptiest of inanities. She dressed
with elaborate care. Pavel Petrovitch met her at a ball, danced a
mazurka with her, in the course of which she did not utter a single
rational word, and fell passionately in love with her. Being accustomed
to make conquests, in this instance, too, he soon attained his object,
but his easy success did not damp his ardour. On the contrary, he was
in still more torturing, still closer bondage to this woman, in whom,
even at the very moment when she surrendered herself utterly, there
seemed always something still mysterious and unattainable, to which
none could penetrate. What was hidden in that soul--God knows! It
seemed as though she were in the power of mysterious forces,
incomprehensible even to herself; they seemed to play on her at will;
her intellect was not powerful enough to master their caprices. Her
whole behaviour presented a series of inconsistencies; the only letters
which could have awakened her husband's just suspicions, she wrote to a
man who was almost a stranger to her, whilst her love had always an
element of melancholy; with a man she had chosen as a lover, she ceased
to laugh and to jest, she listened to him, and gazed at him with a look
of bewilderment. Sometimes, for the most part suddenly, this
bewilderment passed into chill horror; her face took a wild, death-like
expression; she locked herself up in her bedroom, and her maid, putting
her ear to the keyhole, could hear her smothered sobs. More than once,
as he went home after a tender interview, Kirsanov felt within him that
heartrending, bitter vexation which follows on a total failure.

'What more do I want?' he asked himself, while his heart was heavy. He
once gave her a ring with a sphinx engraved on the stone.

'What's that?' she asked; 'a sphinx?'

'Yes,' he answered, 'and that sphinx is you.'

'I?' she queried, and slowly raising her enigmatical glance upon him.
'Do you know that's awfully flattering?' she added with a meaningless
smile, while her eyes still kept the same strange look.

Pavel Petrovitch suffered even while Princess R---- loved him; but when
she grew cold to him, and that happened rather quickly, he almost went
out of his mind. He was on the rack, and he was jealous; he gave her no
peace, followed her about everywhere; she grew sick of his pursuit of
her, and she went abroad. He resigned his commission in spite of the
entreaties of his friends and the exhortations of his superiors, and
followed the princess; four years he spent in foreign countries, at one
time pursuing her, at another time intentionally losing sight of her.
He was ashamed of himself, he was disgusted with his own lack of spirit
... but nothing availed. Her image, that incomprehensible, almost
meaningless, but bewitching image, was deeply rooted in his heart. At
Baden he once more regained his old footing with her; it seemed as
though she had never loved him so passionately ... but in a month it
was all at an end: the flame flickered up for the last time and went
out for ever. Foreseeing inevitable separation, he wanted at least to
remain her friend, as though friendship with such a woman was
possible.... She secretly left Baden, and from that time steadily
avoided Kirsanov. He returned to Russia, and tried to live his former
life again; but he could not get back into the old groove. He wandered
from place to place like a man possessed; he still went into society;
he still retained the habits of a man of the world; he could boast of
two or three fresh conquests; but he no longer expected anything much
of himself or of others, and he undertook nothing. He grew old and
grey; spending all his evenings at the club, jaundiced and bored, and
arguing in bachelor society became a necessity for him--a bad sign, as
we all know. Marriage, of course, he did not even think of. Ten years
passed in this way; they passed by colourless and fruitless--and
quickly, fearfully quickly. Nowhere does time fly past as in Russia; in
prison they say it flies even faster. One day at dinner at the club,
Pavel Petrovitch heard of the death of the Princess R----. She had died
at Paris in a state bordering on insanity.

He got up from the table, and a long time he paced about the rooms of
the club, or stood stockstill near the card-players, but he did not go
home earlier than usual. Some time later he received a packet addressed
to him; in it was the ring he had given the princess. She had drawn
lines in the shape of a cross over the sphinx and sent him word that
the solution of the enigma--was the cross.

This happened at the beginning of the year 1848, at the very time when
Nikolai Petrovitch came to Petersburg, after the loss of his wife.
Pavel Petrovitch had scarcely seen his brother since the latter had
settled in the country; the marriage of Nikolai Petrovitch had
coincided with the very first days of Pavel Petrovitch's acquaintance
with the princess. When he came back from abroad, he had gone to him
with the intention of staying a couple of months with him, in
sympathetic enjoyment of his happiness, but he had only succeeded in
standing a week of it. The difference in the positions of the two
brothers was too great. In 1848, this difference had grown less;
Nikolai Petrovitch had lost his wife, Pavel Petrovitch had lost his
memories; after the death of the princess he tried not to think of her.
But to Nikolai, there remained the sense of a well-spent life, his son
was growing up under his eyes; Pavel, on the contrary, a solitary
bachelor, was entering upon that indefinite twilight period of regrets
that are akin to hopes, and hopes that are akin to regrets, when youth
is over, while old age has not yet come.

This time was harder for Pavel Petrovitch than for another man; in
losing his past, he lost everything.

'I will not invite you to Maryino now,' Nikolai Petrovitch said to him
one day, (he had called his property by that name in honour of his
wife); 'you were dull there in my dear wife's time, and now I think you
would be bored to death.'

'I was stupid and fidgety then,' answered Pavel Petrovitch; 'since then
I have grown quieter, if not wiser. On the contrary, now, if you will
let me, I am ready to settle with you for good.'

For all answer Nikolai Petrovitch embraced him; but a year and a half
passed after this conversation, before Pavel Petrovitch made up his
mind to carry out his intention. When he was once settled in the
country, however, he did not leave it, even during the three winters
which Nikolai Petrovitch spent in Petersburg with his son. He began to
read, chiefly English; he arranged his whole life, roughly speaking, in
the English style, rarely saw the neighbours, and only went out to the
election of marshals, where he was generally silent, only occasionally
annoying and alarming land-owners of the old school by his liberal
sallies, and not associating with the representatives of the younger
generation. Both the latter and the former considered him 'stuck up';
and both parties respected him for his fine aristocratic manners; for
his reputation for successes in love; for the fact that he was very
well dressed and always stayed in the best room in the best hotel; for
the fact that he generally dined well, and had once even dined with
Wellington at Louis Philippe's table; for the fact that he always took
everywhere with him a real silver dressing-case and a portable bath;
for the fact that he always smelt of some exceptionally 'good form'
scent; for the fact that he played whist in masterly fashion, and
always lost; and lastly, they respected him also for his incorruptible
honesty. Ladies considered him enchantingly romantic, but he did not
cultivate ladies' acquaintance....

'So you see, Yevgeny,' observed Arkady, as he finished his story, 'how
unjustly you judge of my uncle! To say nothing of his having more than
once helped my father out of difficulties, given him all his money--the
property, perhaps you don't know, wasn't divided--he's glad to help any
one, among other things he always sticks up for the peasants; it's
true, when he talks to them he frowns and sniffs eau de cologne.' ...

'His nerves, no doubt,' put in Bazarov.

'Perhaps; but his heart is very good. And he's far from being stupid.
What useful advice he has given me especially ... especially in regard
to relations with women.'

'Aha! a scalded dog fears cold water, we know that!'

'In short,' continued Arkady, 'he's profoundly unhappy, believe me;
it's a sin to despise him.'

'And who does despise him?' retorted Bazarov. 'Still, I must say that a
fellow who stakes his whole life on one card--a woman's love--and when
that card fails, turns sour, and lets himself go till he's fit for
nothing, is not a man, but a male. You say he's unhappy; you ought to
know best; to be sure, he's not got rid of all his fads. I'm convinced
that he solemnly imagines himself a superior creature because he reads
that wretched _Galignani_, and once a month saves a peasant from a
flogging.'

'But remember his education, the age in which he grew up,' observed
Arkady.

'Education?' broke in Bazarov. 'Every man must educate himself, just as
I've done, for instance.... And as for the age, why should I depend on
it? Let it rather depend on me. No, my dear fellow, that's all
shallowness, want of backbone! And what stuff it all is, about these
mysterious relations between a man and woman? We physiologists know
what these relations are. You study the anatomy of the eye; where does
the enigmatical glance you talk about come in there? That's all
romantic, nonsensical, æsthetic rot. We had much better go and look at
the beetle.'

And the two friends went off to Bazarov's room, which was already
pervaded by a sort of medico-surgical odour, mingled with the smell of
cheap tobacco.




CHAPTER VIII


Pavel Petrovitch did not long remain present at his brother's interview
with his bailiff, a tall, thin man with a sweet consumptive voice and
knavish eyes, who to all Nikolai Petrovitch's remarks answered,
'Certainly, sir,' and tried to make the peasants out to be thieves and
drunkards. The estate had only recently been put on to the new reformed
system, and the new mechanism worked, creaking like an ungreased wheel,
warping and cracking like homemade furniture of unseasoned wood.
Nikolai Petrovitch did not lose heart, but often he sighed, and was
gloomy; he felt that the thing could not go on without money, and his
money was almost all spent. Arkady had spoken the truth; Pavel
Petrovitch had more than once helped his brother; more than once,
seeing him struggling and cudgelling his brains, at a loss which way to
turn, Pavel Petrovitch moved deliberately to the window, and with his
hands thrust into his pockets, muttered between his teeth, '_mais je
puis vous de l'argent_,' and gave him money; but to-day he had none
himself, and he preferred to go away. The petty details of agricultural
management worried him; besides, it constantly struck him that Nikolai
Petrovitch, for all his zeal and industry, did not set about things in
the right way, though he would not have been able to point out
precisely where Nikolai Petrovitch's mistake lay. 'My brother's not
practical enough,' he reasoned to himself; 'they impose upon him.'
Nikolai Petrovitch, on the other hand, had the highest opinion of Pavel
Petrovitch's practical ability, and always asked his advice. 'I'm a
soft, weak fellow, I've spent my life in the wilds,' he used to say;
'while you haven't seen so much of the world for nothing, you see
through people; you have an eagle eye.' In answer to which Pavel
Petrovitch only turned away, but did not contradict his brother.

Leaving Nikolai Petrovitch in his study, he walked along the corridor,
which separated the front part of the house from the back; when he had
reached a low door, he stopped in hesitation, then pulling his
moustaches, he knocked at it.

'Who's there? Come in,' sounded Fenitchka's voice.

'It's I,' said Pavel Petrovitch, and he opened the door.

Fenitchka jumped up from the chair on which she was sitting with her
baby, and giving him into the arms of a girl, who at once carried him
out of the room, she put straight her kerchief hastily.

'Pardon me, if I disturb you,' began Pavel Petrovitch, not looking at
her; 'I only wanted to ask you ... they are sending into the town
to-day, I think ... please let them buy me some green tea.'

'Certainly,' answered Fenitchka; 'how much do you desire them to buy?'

'Oh, half a pound will be enough, I imagine. You have made a change
here, I see,' he added, with a rapid glance round him, which glided
over Fenitchka's face too. 'The curtains here,' he explained, seeing
she did not understand him.

'Oh, yes, the curtains; Nikolai Petrovitch was so good as to make me a
present of them; but they have been put up a long while now.'

'Yes, and it's a long while since I have been to see you. Now it is
very nice here.'

'Thanks to Nikolai Petrovitch's kindness,' murmured Fenitchka.

'You are more comfortable here than in the little lodge you used to
have?' inquired Pavel Petrovitch urbanely, but without the slightest
smile.

'Certainly, it's more comfortable.'

'Who has been put in your place now?'

'The laundry-maids are there now.'

'Ah!'

Pavel Petrovitch was silent. 'Now he is going,' thought Fenitchka; but
he did not go, and she stood before him motionless.

'What did you send your little one away for?' said Pavel Petrovitch at
last. 'I love children; let me see him.'

Fenitchka blushed all over with confusion and delight. She was afraid
of Pavel Petrovitch; he had scarcely ever spoken to her.

'Dunyasha,' she called; 'will you bring Mitya, please.' (Fenitchka did
not treat any one in the house familiarly.) 'But wait a minute, he must
have a frock on,' Fenitchka was going towards the door.

'That doesn't matter,' remarked Pavel Petrovitch.

'I will be back directly,' answered Fenitchka, and she went out
quickly.

Pavel Petrovitch was left alone, and he looked round this time with
special attention. The small low-pitched room in which he found himself
was very clean and snug. It smelt of the freshly painted floor and of
camomile. Along the walls stood chairs with lyre-shaped backs, bought
by the late general on his campaign in Poland; in one corner was a
little bedstead under a muslin canopy beside an iron-clamped chest with
a convex lid. In the opposite corner a little lamp was burning before a
big dark picture of St. Nikolai the wonder-worker; a tiny porcelain egg
hung by a red ribbon from the protruding gold halo down to the saint's
breast; by the windows greenish glass jars of last year's jam carefully
tied down could be seen; on their paper covers Fenitchka herself had
written in big letters 'Gooseberry'; Nikolai Petrovitch was
particularly fond of that preserve. On a long cord from the ceiling a
cage hung with a short-tailed siskin in it; he was constantly chirping
and hopping about, the cage was constantly shaking and swinging, while
hempseeds fell with a light tap on to the floor. On the wall just above
a small chest of drawers hung some rather bad photographs of Nikolai
Petrovitch in various attitudes, taken by an itinerant photographer;
there too hung a photograph of Fenitchka herself, which was an absolute
failure; it was an eyeless face wearing a forced smile, in a dingy
frame, nothing more could be made out; while above Fenitchka, General
Yermolov, in a Circassian cloak, scowled menacingly upon the Caucasian
mountains in the distance, from beneath a little silk shoe for pins
which fell right on to his brows.

Five minutes passed; bustling and whispering could be heard in the next
room. Pavel Petrovitch took up from the chest of drawers a greasy book,
an odd volume of Masalsky's _Musketeer_, and turned over a few
pages.... The door opened, and Fenitchka came in with Mitya in her
arms. She had put on him a little red smock with embroidery on the
collar, had combed his hair and washed his face; he was breathing
heavily, his whole body working, and his little hands waving in the
air, as is the way with all healthy babies; but his smart smock
obviously impressed him, an expression of delight was reflected in
every part of his little fat person. Fenitchka had put her own hair too
in order, and had arranged her kerchief; but she might well have
remained as she was. And really is there anything in the world more
captivating than a beautiful young mother with a healthy baby in her
arms?

'What a chubby fellow!' said Pavel Petrovitch graciously, and he
tickled Mitya's little double chin with the tapering nail of his
forefinger. The baby stared at the siskin, and chuckled.

'That's uncle,' said Fenitchka, bending her face down to him and
slightly rocking him, while Dunyasha quietly set in the window a
smouldering perfumed stick, putting a halfpenny under it.

'How many months old is he?' asked Pavel Petrovitch.

'Six months; it will soon be seven, on the eleventh.'

'Isn't it eight, Fedosya Nikolaevna?' put in Dunyasha, with some
timidity.

'No, seven; what an idea!' The baby chuckled again, stared at the
chest, and suddenly caught hold of his mother's nose and mouth with all
his five little fingers. 'Saucy mite,' said Fenitchka, not drawing her
face away.

'He's like my brother,' observed Pavel Petrovitch.

'Who else should he be like?' thought Fenitchka.

'Yes,' continued Pavel Petrovitch, as though speaking to himself;
'there's an unmistakable likeness.' He looked attentively, almost
mournfully, at Fenitchka.

'That's uncle,' she repeated, in a whisper this time.

'Ah! Pavel! so you're here!' was heard suddenly the voice of Nikolai
Petrovitch.

Pavel Petrovitch turned hurriedly round, frowning; but his brother
looked at him with such delight, such gratitude, that he could not help
responding to his smile.

'You've a splendid little cherub,' he said, and looking at his watch,
'I came in here to speak about some tea.'

And, assuming an expression of indifference, Pavel Petrovitch at once
went out of the room.

'Did he come of himself?' Nikolai Petrovitch asked Fenitchka.

'Yes; he knocked and came in.'

'Well, and has Arkasha been in to see you again?'

'No. Hadn't I better move into the lodge, Nikolai Petrovitch?'

'Why so?'

'I wonder whether it wouldn't be best just for the first.'

'N ... no,' Nikolai Petrovitch brought out hesitatingly, rubbing his
forehead. 'We ought to have done it before.... How are you, fatty?' he
said, suddenly brightening, and going up to the baby, he kissed him on
the cheek; then he bent a little and pressed his lips to Fenitchka's
hand, which lay white as milk upon Mitya's little red smock.

'Nikolai Petrovitch! what are you doing?' she whispered, dropping her
eyes, then slowly raising them. Very charming was the expression of her
eyes when she peeped, as it were, from under her lids, and smiled
tenderly and a little foolishly.

Nikolai Petrovitch had made Fenitchka's acquaintance in the following
manner. He had once happened three years before to stay a night at an
inn in a remote district town. He was agreeably struck by the cleanness
of the room assigned to him, the freshness of the bed-linen. Surely the
woman of the house must be a German? was the idea that occurred to him;
but she proved to be a Russian, a woman of about fifty, neatly dressed,
of a good-looking, sensible countenance and discreet speech. He entered
into conversation with her at tea; he liked her very much. Nikolai
Petrovitch had at that time only just moved into his new home, and not
wishing to keep serfs in the house, he was on the look-out for
wage-servants; the woman of the inn on her side complained of the small
number of visitors to the town, and the hard times; he proposed to her
to come into his house in the capacity of housekeeper; she consented.
Her husband had long been dead, leaving her an only daughter,
Fenitchka. Within a fortnight Arina Savishna (that was the new
housekeeper's name) arrived with her daughter at Maryino and installed
herself in the little lodge. Nikolai Petrovitch's choice proved a
successful one. Arina brought order into the household. As for
Fenitchka, who was at that time seventeen, no one spoke of her, and
scarcely any one saw her; she lived quietly and sedately, and only on
Sundays Nikolai Petrovitch noticed in the church somewhere in a side
place the delicate profile of her white face. More than a year passed
thus.

One morning, Arina came into his study, and bowing low as usual, she
asked him if he could do anything for her daughter, who had got a spark
from the stove in her eye. Nikolai Petrovitch, like all stay-at-home
people, had studied doctoring and even compiled a homoeopathic guide.
He at once told Arina to bring the patient to him. Fenitchka was much
frightened when she heard the master had sent for her; however, she
followed her mother. Nikolai Petrovitch led her to the window and took
her head in his two hands. After thoroughly examining her red and
swollen eye, he prescribed a fomentation, which he made up himself at
once, and tearing his handkerchief in pieces, he showed her how it
ought to be applied. Fenitchka listened to all he had to say, and then
was going. 'Kiss the master's hand, silly girl,' said Arina. Nikolai
Petrovitch did not give her his hand, and in confusion himself kissed
her bent head on the parting of her hair. Fenitchka's eye was soon well
again, but the impression she had made on Nikolai Petrovitch did not
pass away so quickly. He was for ever haunted by that pure, delicate,
timidly raised face; he felt on the palms of his hands that soft hair,
and saw those innocent, slightly parted lips, through which pearly
teeth gleamed with moist brilliance in the sunshine. He began to watch
her with great attention in church, and tried to get into conversation
with her. At first she was shy of him, and one day meeting him at the
approach of evening in a narrow footpath through a field of rye, she
ran into the tall thick rye, overgrown with cornflowers and wormwood,
so as not to meet him face to face. He caught sight of her little head
through a golden network of ears of rye, from which she was peeping out
like a little animal, and called affectionately to her--

'Good-evening, Fenitchka! I don't bite.'

'Good-evening,' she whispered, not coming out of her ambush.

By degrees she began to be more at home with him, but was still shy in
his presence, when suddenly her mother, Arina, died of cholera. What
was to become of Fenitchka? She inherited from her mother a love for
order, regularity, and respectability; but she was so young, so alone.
Nikolai Petrovitch was himself so good and considerate.... It's
needless to relate the rest....

'So my brother came in to see you?' Nikolai Petrovitch questioned her.
'He knocked and came in?'

'Yes.'

'Well, that's a good thing. Let me give Mitya a swing.'

And Nikolai Petrovitch began tossing him almost up to the ceiling, to
the huge delight of the baby, and to the considerable uneasiness of the
mother, who every time he flew up stretched her arms up towards his
little bare legs.

Pavel Petrovitch went back to his artistic study, with its walls
covered with handsome bluish-grey hangings, with weapons hanging upon a
variegated Persian rug nailed to the wall; with walnut furniture,
upholstered in dark green velveteen, with a _renaissance_ bookcase of
old black oak, with bronze statuettes on the magnificent writing-table,
with an open hearth. He threw himself on the sofa, clasped his hands
behind his head, and remained without moving, looking with a face
almost of despair at the ceiling. Whether he wanted to hide from the
very walls that which was reflected in his face, or for some other
reason, he got up, drew the heavy window curtains, and again threw
himself on the sofa.




CHAPTER IX


On the same day Bazarov made acquaintance with Fenitchka. He was
walking with Arkady in the garden, and explaining to him why some of
the trees, especially the oaks, had not done well.

'You ought to have planted silver poplars here by preference, and
spruce firs, and perhaps limes, giving them some loam. The arbour there
has done well,' he added, 'because it's acacia and lilac; they're
accommodating good fellows, those trees, they don't want much care. But
there's some one in here.'

In the arbour was sitting Fenitchka, with Dunyasha and Mitya. Bazarov
stood still, while Arkady nodded to Fenitchka like an old friend.

'Who's that?' Bazarov asked him directly they had passed by. 'What a
pretty girl!'

'Whom are you speaking of?'

'You know; only one of them was pretty.'

Arkady, not without embarrassment, explained to him briefly who
Fenitchka was.

'Aha!' commented Bazarov; 'your father's got good taste, one can see. I
like him, your father, ay, ay! He's a jolly fellow. We must make
friends though,' he added, and turned back towards the arbour.

'Yevgeny!' Arkady cried after him in dismay; 'mind what you are about,
for mercy's sake.'

'Don't worry yourself,' said Bazarov; 'I know how to behave myself--I'm
not a booby.'

Going up to Fenitchka, he took off his cap.

'Allow me to introduce myself,' he began, with a polite bow. 'I'm a
harmless person, and a friend of Arkady Nikolaevitch's.'

Fenitchka got up from the garden seat and looked at him without
speaking.

'What a splendid baby!' continued Bazarov; 'don't be uneasy, my praises
have never brought ill-luck yet. Why is it his cheeks are so flushed?
Is he cutting his teeth?'

'Yes,' said Fenitchka; 'he has cut four teeth already, and now the gums
are swollen again.'

'Show me, and don't be afraid, I'm a doctor.'

Bazarov took the baby up in his arms, and to the great astonishment
both of Fenitchka and Dunyasha the child made no resistance, and was
not frightened.

'I see, I see.... It's nothing, everything's as it should be; he will
have a good set of teeth. If anything goes wrong, tell me. And are you
quite well yourself?'

'Quite, thank God.'

'Thank God, indeed--that's the great thing. And you?' he added, turning
to Dunyasha.

Dunyasha, a girl very prim in the master's house, and a romp outside
the gates, only giggled in answer.

'Well, that's all right. Here's your gallant fellow.'

Fenitchka received the baby in her arms.

'How good he was with you!' she commented in an undertone.

'Children are always good with me.' answered Bazarov; 'I have a way
with them.'

'Children know who loves them,' remarked Dunyasha.

'Yes, they certainly do,' Fenitchka said. 'Why, Mitya will not go to
some people for anything.'

'Will he come to me?' asked Arkady, who, after standing in the distance
for some time, had gone up to the arbour.

He tried to entice Mitya to come to him, but Mitya threw his head back
and screamed, to Fenitchka's great confusion.

'Another day, when he's had time to get used to me,' said Arkady
indulgently, and the two friends walked away.

'What's her name?' asked Bazarov.

'Fenitchka ... Fedosya,' answered Arkady.

'And her father's name? One must know that too.'

'Nikolaevna.'

'_Bene_. What I like in her is that she's not too embarrassed. Some
people, I suppose, would think ill of her for it. What nonsense! What
is there to embarrass her? She's a mother--she's all right.'

'She's all right,' observed Arkady,--'but my father.'

'And he's right too,' put in Bazarov.

'Well, no, I don't think so.'

'I suppose an extra heir's not to your liking?'

'I wonder you're not ashamed to attribute such ideas to me!' retorted
Arkady hotly; 'I don't consider my father wrong from that point of
view; I think he ought to marry her.'

'Hoity-toity!' responded Bazarov tranquilly. 'What magnanimous fellows
we are! You still attach significance to marriage; I did not expect
that of you.'

The friends walked a few paces in silence.

'I have looked at all your father's establishment,' Bazarov began
again. 'The cattle are inferior, the horses are broken down; the
buildings aren't up to much, and the workmen look confirmed loafers;
while the superintendent is either a fool, or a knave, I haven't quite
found out which yet.'

'You are rather hard on everything to-day, Yevgeny Vassilyevitch.'

'And the dear good peasants are taking your father in to a dead
certainty. You know the Russian proverb, "The Russian peasant will
cheat God Himself."'

'I begin to agree with my uncle,' remarked Arkady; 'you certainly have
a poor opinion of Russians.'

'As though that mattered! The only good point in a Russian is his
having the lowest possible opinion of himself. What does matter is that
two and two make four, and the rest is all foolery.'

'And is nature foolery?' said Arkady, looking pensively at the
bright-coloured fields in the distance, in the beautiful soft light of
the sun, which was not yet high up in the sky.

'Nature, too, is foolery in the sense you understand it. Nature's not a
temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.'

At that instant, the long drawn notes of a violoncello floated out to
them from the house. Some one was playing Schubert's _Expectation_ with
much feeling, though with an untrained hand, and the melody flowed with
honey sweetness through the air.

'What's that?' cried Bazarov in amazement.

'It's my father.'

'Your father plays the violoncello?'

'Yes.'

'And how old is your father?'

'Forty-four.'

Bazarov suddenly burst into a roar of laughter.

'What are you laughing at?'

'Upon my word, a man of forty-four, a _paterfamilias_ in this
out-of-the-way district, playing on the violoncello!'

Bazarov went on laughing; but much as he revered his master, this time
Arkady did not even smile.




CHAPTER X


About a fortnight passed by. Life at Maryino went on its accustomed
course, while Arkady was lazy and enjoyed himself, and Bazarov worked.
Every one in the house had grown used to him, to his careless manners,
and his curt and abrupt speeches. Fenitchka, in particular, was so far
at home with him that one night she sent to wake him up; Mitya had had
convulsions; and he had gone, and, half joking, half-yawning as usual,
he stayed two hours with her and relieved the child. On the other hand
Pavel Petrovitch had grown to detest Bazarov with all the strength of
his soul; he regarded him as stuck-up, impudent, cynical, and vulgar;
he suspected that Bazarov had no respect for him, that he had all but a
contempt for him--him, Pavel Kirsanov!

Nikolai Petrovitch was rather afraid of the young 'nihilist,' and was
doubtful whether his influence over Arkady was for the good; but he was
glad to listen to him, and was glad to be present at his scientific and
chemical experiments. Bazarov had brought with him a microscope, and
busied himself for hours together with it. The servants, too, took to
him, though he made fun of them; they felt, all the same, that he was
one of themselves, not a master. Dunyasha was always ready to giggle
with him, and used to cast significant and stealthy glances at him when
she skipped by like a rabbit; Piotr, a man vain and stupid to the last
degree, for ever wearing an affected frown on his brow, a man whose
whole merit consisted in the fact that he looked civil, could spell out
a page of reading, and was diligent in brushing his coat--even he
smirked and brightened up directly Bazarov paid him any attention; the
boys on the farm simply ran after the 'doctor' like puppies. The old
man Prokofitch was the only one who did not like him; he handed him the
dishes at table with a surly face, called him a 'butcher' and 'an
upstart,' and declared that with his great whiskers he looked like a
pig in a stye. Prokofitch in his own way was quite as much of an
aristocrat as Pavel Petrovitch.

The best days of the year had come--the first days of June. The weather
kept splendidly fine; in the distance, it is true, the cholera was
threatening, but the inhabitants of that province had had time to get
used to its visits. Bazarov used to get up very early and go out for
two or three miles, not for a walk--he couldn't bear walking without an
object--but to collect specimens of plants and insects. Sometimes he
took Arkady with him.

On the way home an argument usually sprang up, and Arkady was usually
vanquished in it, though he said more than his companion.

One day they had lingered rather late; Nikolai Petrovitch went to meet
them in the garden, and as he reached the arbour he suddenly heard the
quick steps and voices of the two young men. They were walking on the
other side of the arbour, and could not see him.

'You don't know my father well enough,' said Arkady.

'Your father's a nice chap,' said Bazarov, 'but he's behind the times;
his day is done.'

Nikolai Petrovitch listened intently.... Arkady made no answer.

The man whose day was done remained two minutes motionless, and stole
slowly home.

'The day before yesterday I saw him reading Pushkin,' Bazarov was
continuing meanwhile. 'Explain to him, please, that that's no earthly
use. He's not a boy, you know; it's time to throw up that rubbish. And
what an idea to be a romantic at this time of day! Give him something
sensible to read.'

'What ought I to give him?' asked Arkady.

'Oh, I think Büchner's _Stoff und Kraft_ to begin with.'

'I think so too,' observed Arkady approving, '_Stoff und Kraft_ is
written in popular language....'

'So it seems,' Nikolai Petrovitch said the same day after dinner to his
brother, as he sat in his study, 'you and I are behind the times, our
day's over. Well, well. Perhaps Bazarov is right; but one thing I
confess, makes me feel sore; I did so hope, precisely now, to get on to
such close intimate terms with Arkady, and it turns out I'm left
behind, and he has gone forward, and we can't understand one another.'

'How has he gone forward? And in what way is he so superior to us
already?' cried Pavel Petrovitch impatiently. 'It's that high and
mighty gentleman, that nihilist, who's knocked all that into his head.
I hate that doctor fellow; in my opinion, he's simply a quack; I'm
convinced, for all his tadpoles, he's not got very far even in
medicine.'

'No, brother, you mustn't say that; Bazarov is clever, and knows his
subject.'

'And his conceit's something revolting,' Pavel Petrovitch broke in
again.

'Yes,' observed Nikolai Petrovitch, 'he is conceited. But there's no
doing without that, it seems; only that's what I did not take into
account. I thought I was doing everything to keep up with the times; I
have started a model farm; I have done well by the peasants, so that I
am positively called a "Red Radical" all over the province; I read, I
study, I try in every way to keep abreast with the requirements of the
day--and they say my day's over. And, brother, I begin to think that it
is.'

'Why so?'

'I'll tell you why. This morning I was sitting reading Pushkin.... I
remember, it happened to be _The Gipsies_ ... all of a sudden Arkady
came up to me, and, without speaking, with such a kindly compassion on
his face, as gently as if I were a baby, took the book away from me,
and laid another before me--a German book ... smiled, and went away,
carrying Pushkin off with him.'

'Upon my word! What book did he give you?'

'This one here.'

And Nikolai Petrovitch pulled the famous treatise of Büchner, in the
ninth edition, out of his coat-tail pocket.

Pavel Petrovitch turned it over in his hands. 'Hm!' he growled. 'Arkady
Nikolaevitch is taking your education in hand. Well, did you try
reading it?'

'Yes, I tried it.'

'Well, what did you think of it?'

'Either I'm stupid, or it's all--nonsense. I must be stupid, I
suppose.'

'Haven't you forgotten your German?' queried Pavel Petrovitch.

'Oh, I understand the German.'

Pavel Petrovitch again turned the book over in his hands, and glanced
from under his brows at his brother. Both were silent.

'Oh, by the way,' began Nikolai Petrovitch, obviously wishing to change
the subject, 'I've got a letter from Kolyazin.'

'Matvy Ilyitch?'

'Yes. He has come to----to inspect the province. He's quite a bigwig
now; and writes to me that, as a relation, he should like to see us
again, and invites you and me and Arkady to the town.'

'Are you going?' asked Pavel Petrovitch.

'No; are you?'

'No, I shan't go either. Much object there would be in dragging oneself
over forty miles on a wild-goose chase. _Mathieu_ wants to show himself
in all his glory. Damn him! he will have the whole province doing him
homage; he can get on without the likes of us. A grand dignity, indeed,
a privy councillor! If I had stayed in the service, if I had drudged on
in official harness, I should have been a general-adjutant by now.
Besides, you and I are behind the times, you know.'

'Yes, brother; it's time, it seems, to order a coffin and cross one's
arms on ones breast,' remarked Nikolai Petrovitch, with a sigh.

'Well, I'm not going to give in quite so soon,' muttered his brother.
'I've got a tussle with that doctor fellow before me, I feel sure of
that.'

A tussle came off that same day at evening tea. Pavel Petrovitch came
into the drawing-room, all ready for the fray, irritable and
determined. He was only waiting for an excuse to fall upon the enemy;
but for a long while an excuse did not present itself. As a rule,
Bazarov said little in the presence of the 'old Kirsanovs' (that was
how he spoke of the brothers), and that evening he felt out of humour,
and drank off cup after cup of tea without a word. Pavel Petrovitch was
all aflame with impatience; his wishes were fulfilled at last.

The conversation turned on one of the neighbouring landowners. 'Rotten
aristocratic snob,' observed Bazarov indifferently. He had met him in
Petersburg.

'Allow me to ask you,' began Pavel Petrovitch, and his lips were
trembling, 'according to your ideas, have the words "rotten" and
"aristocrat" the same meaning?'

'I said "aristocratic snob,"' replied Bazarov, lazily swallowing a sip
of tea.

'Precisely so; but I imagine you have the same opinion of aristocrats
as of aristocratic snobs. I think it my duty to inform you that I do
not share that opinion. I venture to assert that every one knows me for
a man of liberal ideas and devoted to progress; but, exactly for that
reason, I respect aristocrats--real aristocrats. Kindly remember, sir'
(at these words Bazarov lifted his eyes and looked at Pavel
Petrovitch), 'kindly remember, sir,' he repeated, with acrimony--'the
English aristocracy. They do not abate one iota of their rights, and
for that reason they respect the rights of others; they demand the
performance of what is due to them, and for that reason they perform
their own duties. The aristocracy has given freedom to England, and
maintains it for her.'

'We've heard that story a good many times,' replied Bazarov; 'but what
are you trying to prove by that?'

'I am tryin' to prove by that, sir' (when Pavel Petrovitch was angry he
intentionally clipped his words in this way, though, of course, he knew
very well that such forms are not strictly grammatical. In this
fashionable whim could be discerned a survival of the habits of the
times of Alexander. The exquisites of those days, on the rare occasions
when they spoke their own language, made use of such slipshod forms; as
much as to say, 'We, of course, are born Russians, at the same time we
are great swells, who are at liberty to neglect the rules of
scholars'); 'I am tryin' to prove by that, sir, that without the sense
of personal dignity, without self-respect--and these two sentiments are
well developed in the aristocrat--there is no secure foundation for the
social ... _bien public_ ... the social fabric. Personal character,
sir--that is the chief thing; a man's personal character must be firm
as a rock, since everything is built on it. I am very well aware, for
instance, that you are pleased to consider my habits, my dress, my
refinements, in fact, ridiculous; but all that proceeds from a sense of
self-respect, from a sense of duty--yes, indeed, of duty. I live in the
country, in the wilds, but I will not lower myself. I respect the
dignity of man in myself.'

'Let me ask you, Pavel Petrovitch,' commented Bazarov; 'you respect
yourself, and sit with your hands folded; what sort of benefit does
that do to the _bien public_? If you didn't respect yourself, you'd do
just the same.'

Pavel Petrovitch turned white. 'That's a different question. It's
absolutely unnecessary for me to explain to you now why I sit with
folded hands, as you are pleased to express yourself. I wish only to
tell you that aristocracy is a principle, and in our days none but
immoral or silly people can live without principles. I said that to
Arkady the day after he came home, and I repeat it now. Isn't it so,
Nikolai?'

Nikolai Petrovitch nodded his head.

'Aristocracy, Liberalism, progress, principles,' Bazarov was saying
meanwhile; 'if you think of it, what a lot of foreign ... and useless
words! To a Russian they're good for nothing.'

'What is good for something according to you? If we listen to you, we
shall find ourselves outside humanity, outside its laws. Come--the
logic of history demands ...'

'But what's that logic to us? We can get on without that too.'

'How do you mean?'

'Why, this. You don't need logic, I hope, to put a bit of bread in your
mouth when you're hungry. What's the object of these abstractions to
us?'

Pavel Petrovitch raised his hands in horror.

'I don't understand you, after that. You insult the Russian people. I
don't understand how it's possible not to acknowledge principles,
rules! By virtue of what do you act then?'

'I've told you already, uncle, that we don't accept any authorities,'
put in Arkady.

'We act by virtue of what we recognise as beneficial,' observed
Bazarov. 'At the present time, negation is the most beneficial of
all--and we deny----'

'Everything?'

'Everything!'

'What? not only art and poetry ... but even ... horrible to say ...'

'Everything,' repeated Bazarov, with indescribable composure.

Pavel Petrovitch stared at him. He had not expected this; while Arkady
fairly blushed with delight.

'Allow me, though,' began Nikolai Petrovitch. 'You deny everything; or,
speaking more precisely, you destroy everything.... But one must
construct too, you know.'

'That's not our business now.... The ground wants clearing first.'

'The present condition of the people requires it,' added Arkady, with
dignity; 'we are bound to carry out these requirements, we have no
right to yield to the satisfaction of our personal egoism.'

This last phrase obviously displeased Bazarov; there was a flavour of
philosophy, that is to say, romanticism about it, for Bazarov called
philosophy, too, romanticism, but he did not think it necessary to
correct his young disciple.

'No, no!' cried Pavel Petrovitch, with sudden energy. 'I'm not willing
to believe that you, young men, know the Russian people really, that
you are the representatives of their requirements, their efforts! No;
the Russian people is not what you imagine it. Tradition it holds
sacred; it is a patriarchal people; it cannot live without faith ...'

'I'm not going to dispute that,' Bazarov interrupted. 'I'm even ready
to agree that in that you're right.'

'But if I am right ...'

'And, all the same, that proves nothing.'

'It just proves nothing,' repeated Arkady, with the confidence of a
practised chess-player, who has foreseen an apparently dangerous move
on the part of his adversary, and so is not at all taken aback by it.

'How does it prove nothing?' muttered Pavel Petrovitch, astounded. 'You
must be going against the people then?'

'And what if we are?' shouted Bazarov. 'The people imagine that, when
it thunders, the prophet Ilya's riding across the sky in his chariot.
What then? Are we to agree with them? Besides, the people's Russian;
but am I not Russian too?'

'No, you are not Russian, after all you have just been saying! I can't
acknowledge you as Russian.'

'My grandfather ploughed the land,' answered Bazarov with haughty
pride. 'Ask any one of your peasants which of us--you or me--he'd more
readily acknowledge as a fellow-countryman. You don't even know how to
talk to them.'

'While you talk to him and despise him at the same time.'

'Well, suppose he deserves contempt. You find fault with my attitude,
but how do you know that I have got it by chance, that it's not a
product of that very national spirit, in the name of which you wage war
on it?'

'What an idea! Much use in nihilists!'

'Whether they're of use or not, is not for us to decide. Why, even you
suppose you're not a useless person.'

'Gentlemen, gentlemen, no personalities, please!' cried Nikolai
Petrovitch, getting up.

Pavel Petrovitch smiled, and laying his hand on his brother's shoulder,
forced him to sit down again.

'Don't be uneasy,' he said; 'I shall not forget myself, just through
that sense of dignity which is made fun of so mercilessly by our
friend--our friend, the doctor. Let me ask,' he resumed, turning again
to Bazarov; 'you suppose, possibly, that your doctrine is a novelty?
That is quite a mistake. The materialism you advocate has been more
than once in vogue already, and has always proved insufficient ...'

'A foreign word again!' broke in Bazarov. He was beginning to feel
vicious, and his face assumed a peculiar coarse coppery hue. 'In the
first place, we advocate nothing; that's not our way.'

'What do you do, then?'

'I'll tell you what we do. Not long ago we used to say that our
officials took bribes, that we had no roads, no commerce, no real
justice ...'

'Oh, I see, you are reformers--that's what that's called, I fancy. I
too should agree to many of your reforms, but ...'

'Then we suspected that talk, perpetual talk, and nothing but talk,
about our social diseases, was not worth while, that it all led to
nothing but superficiality and pedantry; we saw that our leading men,
so-called advanced people and reformers, are no good; that we busy
ourselves over foolery, talk rubbish about art, unconscious
creativeness, parliamentarism, trial by jury, and the deuce knows what
all; while, all the while, it's a question of getting bread to eat,
while we're stifling under the grossest superstition, while all our
enterprises come to grief, simply because there aren't honest men
enough to carry them on, while the very emancipation our Government's
busy upon will hardly come to any good, because peasants are glad to
rob even themselves to get drunk at the gin-shop.'

'Yes,' interposed Pavel Petrovitch, 'yes; you were convinced of all
this, and decided not to undertake anything seriously, yourselves.'

'We decided not to undertake anything,' repeated Bazarov grimly. He
suddenly felt vexed with himself for having, without reason, been so
expansive before this gentleman.

'But to confine yourselves to abuse?'

'To confine ourselves to abuse.'

'And that is called nihilism?'

'And that's called nihilism,' Bazarov repeated again, this time with
peculiar rudeness.

Pavel Petrovitch puckered up his face a little. 'So that's it!' he
observed in a strangely composed voice. 'Nihilism is to cure all our
woes, and you, you are our heroes and saviours. But why do you abuse
others, those reformers even? Don't you do as much talking as every one
else?'

'Whatever faults we have, we do not err in that way,' Bazarov muttered
between his teeth.

'What, then? Do you act, or what? Are you preparing for action?'

Bazarov made no answer. Something like a tremor passed over Pavel
Petrovitch, but he at once regained control of himself.

'Hm! ... Action, destruction ...' he went on. 'But how destroy without
even knowing why?'

'We shall destroy, because we are a force,' observed Arkady.

Pavel Petrovitch looked at his nephew and laughed.

'Yes, a force is not to be called to account,' said Arkady, drawing
himself up.

'Unhappy boy!' wailed Pavel Petrovitch, he was positively incapable of
maintaining his firm demeanour any longer. 'If you could only realise
what it is you are doing for your country. No; it's enough to try the
patience of an angel! Force! There's force in the savage Kalmuck, in
the Mongolian; but what is it to us? What is precious to us is
civilisation; yes, yes, sir, its fruits are precious to us. And don't
tell me those fruits are worthless; the poorest dauber, _un
barbouilleur_, the man who plays dance music for five farthings an
evening, is of more use than you, because they are the representatives
of civilisation, and not of brute Mongolian force! You fancy yourselves
advanced people, and all the while you are only fit for the Kalmuck's
hovel! Force! And recollect, you forcible gentlemen, that you're only
four men and a half, and the others are millions, who won't let you
trample their sacred traditions under foot, who will crush you and walk
over you!'

'If we're crushed, serve us right,' observed Bazarov. 'But that's an
open question. We are not so few as you suppose.'

'What? You seriously suppose you will come to terms with a whole
people?'

'All Moscow was burnt down, you know, by a farthing dip,' answered
Bazarov.

'Yes, yes. First a pride almost Satanic, then ridicule--that, that's
what it is attracts the young, that's what gains an ascendancy over the
inexperienced hearts of boys! Here's one of them sitting beside you,
ready to worship the ground under your feet. Look at him! (Arkady
turned away and frowned.) And this plague has spread far already. I
have been told that in Rome our artists never set foot in the Vatican.
Raphael they regard as almost a fool, because, if you please, he's an
authority; while they're all the while most disgustingly sterile and
unsuccessful, men whose imagination does not soar beyond 'Girls at a
Fountain,' however they try! And the girls even out of drawing. They
are fine fellows to your mind, are they not?'

'To my mind,' retorted Bazarov, 'Raphael's not worth a brass farthing;
and they're no better than he.'

'Bravo! bravo! Listen, Arkady ... that's how young men of to-day ought
to express themselves! And if you come to think of it, how could they
fail to follow you! In old days, young men had to study; they didn't
want to be called dunces, so they had to work hard whether they liked
it or not. But now, they need only say, "Everything in the world is
foolery!" and the trick's done. Young men are delighted. And, to be
sure, they were simply geese before, and now they have suddenly turned
nihilists.'

'Your praiseworthy sense of personal dignity has given way,' remarked
Bazarov phlegmatically, while Arkady was hot all over, and his eyes
were flashing. 'Our argument has gone too far; it's better to cut it
short, I think. I shall be quite ready to agree with you,' he added,
getting up, 'when you bring forward a single institution in our present
mode of life, in family or in social life, which does not call for
complete and unqualified destruction.'

'I will bring forward millions of such institutions,' cried Pavel
Petrovitch--'millions! Well--the Mir, for instance.'

A cold smile curved Bazarov's lips. 'Well, as regards the Mir,' he
commented; 'you had better talk to your brother. He has seen by now, I
should fancy, what sort of thing the Mir is in fact--its common
guarantee, its sobriety, and other features of the kind.'

'The family, then, the family as it exists among our peasants!' cried
Pavel Petrovitch.

'And that subject, too, I imagine, it will be better for yourselves not
to go into in detail. Don't you realise all the advantages of the head
of the family choosing his daughters-in-law? Take my advice, Pavel
Petrovitch, allow yourself two days to think about it; you're not
likely to find anything on the spot. Go through all our classes, and
think well over each, while I and Arkady will ...'

'Will go on turning everything into ridicule,' broke in Pavel
Petrovitch.

'No, will go on dissecting frogs. Come, Arkady; good-bye for the
present, gentlemen!'

The two friends walked off. The brothers were left alone, and at first
they only looked at one another.

'So that,' began Pavel Petrovitch, 'so that's what our young men of
this generation are! They are like that--our successors!'

'Our successors!' repeated Nikolai Petrovitch, with a dejected smile.
He had been sitting on thorns, all through the argument, and had done
nothing but glance stealthily, with a sore heart, at Arkady. 'Do you
know what I was reminded of, brother? I once had a dispute with our
poor mother; she stormed, and wouldn't listen to me. At last I said to
her, "Of course, you can't understand me; we belong," I said, "to two
different generations." She was dreadfully offended, while I thought,
"There's no help for it. It's a bitter pill, but she has to swallow
it." You see, now, our turn has come, and our successors can say to us,
"You are not of our generation; swallow your pill."'

'You are beyond everything in your generosity and modesty,' replied
Pavel Petrovitch. 'I'm convinced, on the contrary, that you and I are
far more in the right than these young gentlemen, though we do perhaps
express ourselves in old-fashioned language, _vieilli_, and have not
the same insolent conceit.... And the swagger of the young men
nowadays! You ask one, "Do you take red wine or white?" "It is my
custom to prefer red!" he answers in a deep bass, with a face as solemn
as if the whole universe had its eyes on him at that instant....'

'Do you care for any more tea?' asked Fenitchka, putting her head in at
the door; she had not been able to make up her mind to come into the
drawing-room while there was the sound of voices in dispute there.

'No, you can tell them to take the samovar,' answered Nikolai
Petrovitch, and he got up to meet her. Pavel Petrovitch said '_bon
soir_' to him abruptly, and went away to his study.




CHAPTER XI


Half an hour later Nikolai Petrovitch went into the garden to his
favourite arbour. He was overtaken by melancholy thoughts. For the
first time he realised clearly the distance between him and his son; he
foresaw that every day it would grow wider and wider. In vain, then,
had he spent whole days sometimes in the winter at Petersburg over the
newest books; in vain had he listened to the talk of the young men; in
vain had he rejoiced when he succeeded in putting in his word too in
their heated discussions. 'My brother says we are right,' he thought,
'and apart from all vanity, I do think myself that they are further
from the truth than we are, though at the same time I feel there is
something behind them we have not got, some superiority over us.... Is
it youth? No; not only youth. Doesn't their superiority consist in
there being fewer traces of the slaveowner in them than in us?'

Nikolai Petrovitch's head sank despondently, and he passed his hand
over his face.

'But to renounce poetry?' he thought again; 'to have no feeling for
art, for nature ...'

And he looked round, as though trying to understand how it was possible
to have no feeling for nature. It was already evening; the sun was
hidden behind a small copse of aspens which lay a quarter of a mile
from the garden; its shadow stretched indefinitely across the still
fields. A peasant on a white nag went at a trot along the dark, narrow
path close beside the copse; his whole figure was clearly visible even
to the patch on his shoulder, in spite of his being in the shade; the
horse's hoofs flew along bravely. The sun's rays from the farther side
fell full on the copse, and piercing through its thickets, threw such a
warm light on the aspen trunks that they looked like pines, and their
leaves were almost a dark blue, while above them rose a pale blue sky,
faintly tinged by the glow of sunset. The swallows flew high; the wind
had quite died away, belated bees hummed slowly and drowsily among the
lilac blossom; a swarm of midges hung like a cloud over a solitary
branch which stood out against the sky. 'How beautiful, my God!'
thought Nikolai Petrovitch, and his favourite verses were almost on his
lips; he remembered Arkady's _Stoff und Kraft_--and was silent, but
still he sat there, still he gave himself up to the sorrowful
consolation of solitary thought. He was fond of dreaming; his country
life had developed the tendency in him. How short a time ago, he had
been dreaming like this, waiting for his son at the posting station,
and what a change already since that day; their relations that were
then undefined, were defined now--and how defined! Again his dead wife
came back to his imagination, but not as he had known her for many
years, not as the good domestic housewife, but as a young girl with a
slim figure, innocently inquiring eyes, and a tight twist of hair on
her childish neck. He remembered how he had seen her for the first
time. He was still a student then. He had met her on the staircase of
his lodgings, and, jostling by accident against her, he tried to
apologise, and could only mutter, '_Pardon, monsieur_,' while she
bowed, smiled, and suddenly seemed frightened, and ran away, though at
the bend of the staircase she had glanced rapidly at him, assumed a
serious air, and blushed. Afterwards, the first timid visits, the
half-words, the half-smiles, and embarrassment; and melancholy, and
yearnings, and at last that breathing rapture.... Where had it all
vanished? She had been his wife, he had been happy as few on earth are
happy.... 'But,' he mused, 'these sweet first moments, why could one
not live an eternal, undying life in them?'

He did not try to make his thought clear to himself; but he felt that
he longed to keep that blissful time by something stronger than memory;
he longed to feel his Marya near him again to have the sense of her
warmth and breathing, and already he could fancy that over him....

'Nikolai Petrovitch,' came the sound of Fenitchka's voice close by him;
'where are you?'

He started. He felt no pang, no shame. He never even admitted the
possibility of comparison between his wife and Fenitchka, but he was
sorry she had thought of coming to look for him. Her voice had brought
back to him at once his grey hairs, his age, his reality....

The enchanted world into which he was just stepping, which was just
rising out of the dim mists of the past, was shaken--and vanished.

'I'm here,' he answered; 'I'm coming, run along.' 'There it is, the
traces of the slave owner,' flashed through his mind. Fenitchka peeped
into the arbour at him without speaking, and disappeared; while he
noticed with astonishment that the night had come on while he had been
dreaming. Everything around was dark and hushed. Fenitchka's face had
glimmered so pale and slight before him. He got up, and was about to go
home; but the emotion stirred in his heart could not be soothed at
once, and he began slowly walking about the garden, sometimes looking
at the ground at his feet, and then raising his eyes towards the sky
where swarms of stars were twinkling. He walked a great deal, till he
was almost tired out, while the restlessness within him, a kind of
yearning, vague, melancholy restlessness, still was not appeased. Oh,
how Bazarov would have laughed at him, if he had known what was passing
within him then! Arkady himself would have condemned him. He, a man
forty-four years old, an agriculturist and a farmer, was shedding
tears, causeless tears; this was a hundred times worse than the
violoncello.

Nikolai Petrovitch continued walking, and could not make up his mind to
go into the house, into the snug peaceful nest, which looked out at him
so hospitably from all its lighted windows; he had not the force to
tear himself away from the darkness, the garden, the sense of the fresh
air in his face, from that melancholy, that restless craving.

At a turn in the path, he was met by Pavel Petrovitch. 'What's the
matter with you?' he asked Nikolai Petrovitch; 'you are as white as a
ghost; you are not well; why don't you go to bed?'

Nikolai Petrovitch explained to him briefly his state of feeling and
moved away. Pavel Petrovitch went to the end of the garden, and he too
grew thoughtful, and he too raised his eyes toward the heavens. But in
his beautiful dark eyes, nothing was reflected but the light of the
stars. He was not born an idealist, and his fastidiously dry and
sensuous soul, with its French tinge of cynicism was not capable of
dreaming....

'Do you know what?' Bazarov was saying to Arkady the same night. 'I've
got a splendid idea. Your father was saying to-day that he'd had an
invitation from your illustrious relative. Your father's not going; let
us be off to X----; you know the worthy man invites you too. You see
what fine weather it is; we'll stroll about and look at the town. We'll
have five or six days' outing, and enjoy ourselves.'

'And you'll come back here again?'

'No; I must go to my father's. You know, he lives about twenty-five
miles from X----. I've not seen him for a long while, and my mother
too; I must cheer the old people up. They've been good to me,
especially my father; he's awfully funny. I'm their only one too.'

'And will you be long with them?'

'I don't suppose so. It will be dull, of course.'

'And you'll come to us on your way back?'

'I don't know ... I'll see. Well, what do you say? Shall we go?'

'If you like,' observed Arkady languidly.

In his heart he was highly delighted with his friend's suggestion, but
he thought it a duty to conceal his feeling. He was not a nihilist for
nothing!

The next day he set off with Bazarov to X----. The younger part of the
household at Maryino were sorry at their going; Dunyasha even cried ...
but the old folks breathed more easily.




CHAPTER XII


The town of X---- to which our friends set off was in the jurisdiction
of a governor who was a young man, and at once a progressive and a
despot, as often happens with Russians. Before the end of the first
year of his government, he had managed to quarrel not only with the
marshal of nobility, a retired officer of the guards, who kept open
house and a stud of horses, but even with his own subordinates. The
feuds arising from this cause assumed at last such proportions that the
ministry in Petersburg had found it necessary to send down a trusted
personage with a commission to investigate it all on the spot. The
choice of the authorities fell upon Matvy Ilyitch Kolyazin, the son of
the Kolyazin, under whose protection the brothers Kirsanov had once
found themselves. He, too, was a 'young man'; that is to say, he had
not long passed forty, but he was already on the high road to becoming
a statesman, and wore a star on each side of his breast--one, to be
sure, a foreign star, not of the first magnitude. Like the governor,
whom he had come down to pass judgment upon, he was reckoned a
progressive; and though he was already a bigwig, he was not like the
majority of bigwigs. He had the highest opinion of himself; his vanity
knew no bounds, but he behaved simply, looked affable, listened
condescendingly, and laughed so good-naturedly, that on a first
acquaintance he might even be taken for 'a jolly good fellow.' On
important occasions, however, he knew, as the saying is, how to make
his authority felt. 'Energy is essential,' he used to say then,
'_l'énergie est la première qualité d'un homme d'état_;' and for all
that, he was usually taken in, and any moderately experienced official
could turn him round his finger. Matvy Ilyitch used to speak with great
respect of Guizot, and tried to impress every one with the idea that he
did not belong to the class of _routiniers_ and high-and-dry
bureaucrats, that not a single phenomenon of social life passed
unnoticed by him.... All such phrases were very familiar to him. He
even followed, with dignified indifference, it is true, the development
of contemporary literature; so a grown-up man who meets a procession of
small boys in the street will sometimes walk after it. In reality,
Matvy Ilyitch had not got much beyond those political men of the days
of Alexander, who used to prepare for an evening party at Madame
Svyetchin's by reading a page of Condillac; only his methods were
different, more modern. He was an adroit courtier, a great hypocrite,
and nothing more; he had no special aptitude for affairs, and no
intellect, but he knew how to manage his own business successfully; no
one could get the better of him there, and, to be sure, that's the
principal thing.

Matvy Ilyitch received Arkady with the good-nature, we might even call
it playfulness, characteristic of the enlightened higher official. He
was astonished, however, when he heard that the cousins he had invited
had remained at home in the country. 'Your father was always a queer
fellow,' he remarked, playing with the tassels of his magnificent
velvet dressing-gown, and suddenly turning to a young official in a
discreetly buttoned-up uniform, he cried, with an air of concentrated
attention, 'What?' The young man, whose lips were glued together from
prolonged silence, got up and looked in perplexity at his chief. But,
having nonplussed his subordinate, Matvy Ilyitch paid him no further
attention. Our higher officials are fond as a rule of nonplussing their
subordinates; the methods to which they have recourse to attain that
end are rather various. The following means, among others, is in great
vogue, '_is quite a favourite_,' as the English say; a high official
suddenly ceases to understand the simplest words, assuming total
deafness. He will ask, for instance, What's to-day?'

He is respectfully informed, 'To-day's Friday, your Ex-s-s-s-lency.'

'Eh? What? What's that? What do you say?' the great man repeats with
intense attention.

'To-day's Friday, your Ex--s--s--lency.'

'Eh? What? What's Friday? What Friday?'

'Friday, your Ex--s--s--s--lency, the day of the week.'

'What, do you pretend to teach me, eh?'

Matvy Ilyitch was a higher official all the same, though he was
reckoned a liberal.

'I advise you, my dear boy, to go and call on the Governor,' he said to
Arkady; 'you understand, I don't advise you to do so because I adhere
to old-fashioned ideas of the necessity of paying respect to
authorities, but simply because the Governor's a very decent fellow;
besides, you probably want to make acquaintance with the society
here.... You're not a bear, I hope? And he's giving a great ball the
day after to-morrow.'

'Will you be at the ball?' inquired Arkady.

'He gives it in my honour,' answered Matvy Ilyitch, almost pityingly.
'Do you dance?'

'Yes; I dance, but not well.'

'That's a pity! There are pretty girls here, and it's a disgrace for a
young man not to dance. Again, I don't say that through any
old-fashioned ideas; I don't in the least imagine that a man's wit lies
in his feet, but Byronism is ridiculous, _il a fait son temps_.'

'But, uncle, it's not through Byronism, I ...'

'I will introduce you to the ladies here; I will take you under my
wing,' interrupted Matvy Ilyitch, and he laughed complacently. 'You'll
find it warm, eh?'

A servant entered and announced the arrival of the superintendent of
the Crown domains, a mild-eyed old man, with deep creases round his
mouth, who was excessively fond of nature, especially on a summer day,
when, in his words, 'every little busy bee takes a little bribe from
every little flower.' Arkady withdrew.

He found Bazarov at the tavern where they were staying, and was a long
while persuading him to go with him to the Governor's. 'Well, there's
no help for it,' said Bazarov at last. 'It's no good doing things by
halves. We came to look at the gentry; let's look at them!'

The Governor received the young men affably, but he did not ask them to
sit down, nor did he sit down himself. He was in an everlasting fuss
and hurry; in the morning he used to put on a tight uniform and an
excessively stiff cravat; he never ate or drank enough; he was for ever
making arrangements. He invited Kirsanov and Bazarov to his ball, and
within a few minutes invited them a second time, regarding them as
brothers, and calling them Kisarov.

They were on their way home from the Governor's, when suddenly a short
man, in a Slavophil national dress, leaped out of a trap that was
passing them, and crying, 'Yevgeny Vassilyitch!' dashed up to Bazarov.

'Ah! it's you, Herr Sitnikov,' observed Bazarov, still stepping along
on the pavement; 'by what chance did you come here?'

'Fancy, absolutely by chance,' he replied, and returning to the trap,
he waved his hand several times, and shouted, 'Follow, follow us! My
father had business here,' he went on, hopping across the gutter, 'and
so he asked me.... I heard to-day of your arrival, and have already
been to see you....' (The friends did, in fact, on returning to their
room, find there a card, with the corners turned down, bearing the name
of Sitnikov, on one side in French, on the other in Slavonic
characters.) 'I hope you are not coming from the Governor's?'

'It's no use to hope; we come straight from him.'

'Ah! in that case I will call on him too.... Yevgeny Vassilyitch,
introduce me to your ... to the ...'

'Sitnikov, Kirsanov,' mumbled Bazarov, not stopping.

'I am greatly flattered,' began Sitnikov, walking sidewise, smirking,
and hurriedly pulling off his really over-elegant gloves. 'I have heard
so much.... I am an old acquaintance of Yevgeny Vassilyitch, and, I may
say--his disciple. I am indebted to him for my regeneration....'

Arkady looked at Bazarov's disciple. There was an expression of
excitement and dulness imprinted on the small but pleasant features of
his well-groomed face; his small eyes, that seemed squeezed in, had a
fixed and uneasy look, and his laugh, too, was uneasy--a sort of short,
wooden laugh.

'Would you believe it,' he pursued, 'when Yevgeny Vassilyitch for the
first time said before me that it was not right to accept any
authorities, I felt such enthusiasm ... as though my eyes were opened!
Here, I thought, at last I have found a man! By the way, Yevgeny
Vassilyitch, you positively must come to know a lady here, who is
really capable of understanding you, and for whom your visit would be a
real festival; you have heard of her, I suppose?'

'Who is it?' Bazarov brought out unwillingly.

'Kukshina, _Eudoxie_, Evdoksya Kukshin. She's a remarkable nature,
_émancipée_ in the true sense of the word, an advanced woman. Do you
know what? We'll all go together to see her now. She lives only two
steps from here. We will have lunch there. I suppose you have not
lunched yet?'

'No; not yet.'

'Well, that's capital. She has separated, you understand, from her
husband; she is not dependent on any one.'

'Is she pretty?' Bazarov cut in.

'N-no, one couldn't say that.'

'Then, what the devil are you asking us to see her for?'

'Fie; you must have your joke.... She will give us a bottle of
champagne.'

'Oh, that's it. One can see the practical man at once. By the way, is
your father still in the gin business?'

'Yes,' said Sitnikov, hurriedly, and he gave a shrill spasmodic laugh.
'Well? Will you come?'

'I don't really know.'

'You wanted to see people, go along,' said Arkady in an undertone.

'And what do you say to it, Mr. Kirsanov?' Sitnikov put in. 'You must
come too; we can't go without you.'

'But how can we burst in upon her all at once?'

'That's no matter. Kukshina's a brick!'

'There will be a bottle of champagne?' asked Bazarov.

'Three!' cried Sitnikov; 'that I answer for.'

'What with?'

'My own head.'

'Your father's purse would be better. However, we are coming.'




CHAPTER XIII


The small gentleman's house in the Moscow style, in which Avdotya
Nikitishna, otherwise Evdoksya, Kukshin, lived, was in one of the
streets of X----, which had been lately burnt down; it is well known
that our provincial towns are burnt down every five years. At the door,
above a visiting card nailed on all askew, there was a bell-handle to
be seen, and in the hall the visitors were met by some one, not exactly
a servant, nor exactly a companion, in a cap--unmistakable tokens of
the progressive tendencies of the lady of the house. Sitnikov inquired
whether Avdotya Nikitishna was at home.

'Is that you, _Victor_?' sounded a shrill voice from the adjoining
room. 'Come in.'

The woman in the cap disappeared at once.

'I'm not alone,' observed Sitnikov, with a sharp look at Arkady and
Bazarov as he briskly pulled off his overcoat, beneath which appeared
something of the nature of a coachman's velvet jacket.

'No matter,' answered the voice. '_Entrez_.'

The young men went in. The room into which they walked was more like a
working study than a drawing-room. Papers, letters, fat numbers of
Russian journals, for the most part uncut, lay at random on the dusty
tables; white cigarette ends lay scattered in every direction. On a
leather-covered sofa, a lady, still young, was half reclining. Her fair
hair was rather dishevelled; she wore a silk gown, not perfectly tidy,
heavy bracelets on her short arms, and a lace handkerchief on her head.
She got up from the sofa, and carelessly drawing a velvet cape trimmed
with yellowish ermine over her shoulders, she said languidly,
'Good-morning, _Victor_,' and pressed Sitnikov's hand.

'Bazarov, Kirsanov,' he announced abruptly in imitation of Bazarov.

'Delighted,' answered Madame Kukshin, and fixing on Bazarov a pair of
round eyes, between which was a forlorn little turned-up red nose, 'I
know you,' she added, and pressed his hand too.

Bazarov scowled. There was nothing repulsive in the little plain person
of the emancipated woman; but the expression of her face produced a
disagreeable effect on the spectator. One felt impelled to ask her,
'What's the matter; are you hungry? Or bored? Or shy? What are you in a
fidget about?' Both she and Sitnikov had always the same uneasy air.
She was extremely unconstrained, and at the same time awkward; she
obviously regarded herself as a good-natured, simple creature, and all
the while, whatever she did, it always struck one that it was not just
what she wanted to do; everything with her seemed, as children say,
done on purpose, that's to say, not simply, not naturally.

'Yes, yes, I know you, Bazarov,' she repeated. (She had the
habit--peculiar to many provincial and Moscow ladies--of calling men by
their surnames from the first day of acquaintance with them.) 'Will you
have a cigar?'

'A cigar's all very well,' put in Sitnikov, who by now was lolling in
an armchair, his legs in the air; 'but give us some lunch. We're
awfully hungry; and tell them to bring us up a little bottle of
champagne.'

'Sybarite,' commented Evdoksya, and she laughed. (When she laughed the
gum showed above her upper teeth.) 'Isn't it true, Bazarov; he's a
Sybarite?'

'I like comfort in life,' Sitnikov brought out, with dignity. 'That
does not prevent my being a Liberal.'

'No, it does; it does prevent it!' cried Evdoksya. She gave directions,
however, to her maid, both as regards the lunch and the champagne.

'What do you think about it?' she added, turning to Bazarov. 'I'm
persuaded you share my opinion.'

'Well, no,' retorted Bazarov; 'a piece of meat's better than a piece of
bread even from the chemical point of view.'

'You are studying chemistry? That is my passion. I've even invented a
new sort of composition myself.'

'A composition? You?'

'Yes. And do you know for what purpose? To make dolls' heads so that
they shouldn't break. I'm practical, too, yon see. But everything's not
quite ready yet. I've still to read Liebig. By the way, have you read
Kislyakov's article on Female Labour, in the _Moscow Gazette_? Read it
please. You're interested in the woman question, I suppose? And in the
schools too? What does your friend do? What is his name?'

Madame Kukshin shed her questions one after another with affected
negligence, not waiting for an answer; spoilt children talk so to their
nurses.

'My name's Arkady Nikolaitch Kirsanov,' said Arkady, 'and I'm doing
nothing.'

Evdoksya giggled. 'How charming! What, don't you smoke? Victor, do you
know, I'm very angry with you.'

'What for?'

'They tell me you've begun singing the praises of George Sand again. A
retrograde woman, and nothing else! How can people compare her with
Emerson! She hasn't an idea on education, nor physiology, nor anything.
She'd never, I'm persuaded, heard of embryology, and in these
days--what can be done without that?' (Evdoksya even threw up her
hands.) 'Ah, what a wonderful article Elisyevitch has written on that
subject! He's a gentleman of genius.' (Evdoksya constantly made use of
the word 'gentleman' instead of the word 'man.') 'Bazarov, sit by me on
the sofa. You don't know, perhaps, I'm awfully afraid of you.'

'Why so? Allow me to ask.'

'You're a dangerous gentleman; you're such a critic. Good God! yes!
why, how absurd, I'm talking like some country lady. I really am a
country lady, though. I manage my property myself; and only fancy, my
bailiff Erofay's a wonderful type, quite like Cooper's Pathfinder;
something in him so spontaneous! I've come to settle here finally; it's
an intolerable town, isn't it? But what's one to do?'

'The town's like every town,' Bazarov remarked coolly.

'All its interests are so petty, that's what's so awful! I used to
spend the winters in Moscow ... but now my lawful spouse, Monsieur
Kukshin's residing there. And besides, Moscow nowadays ... there, I
don't know--it's not the same as it was. I'm thinking of going abroad;
last year I was on the point of setting off.'

'To Paris, I suppose?' queried Bazarov.

'To Paris and to Heidelberg.'

'Why to Heidelberg?'

'How can you ask? Why, Bunsen's there!'

To this Bazarov could find no reply.

'_Pierre_ Sapozhnikov ... do you know him?'

'No, I don't.'

'Not know _Pierre_ Sapozhnikov ... he's always at Lidia Hestatov's.'

'I don't know her either.'

'Well, it was he undertook to escort me. Thank God, I'm independent;
I've no children.... What was that I said: _thank God!_ It's no matter
though.'

Evdoksya rolled a cigarette up between her fingers, which were brown
with tobacco stains, put it to her tongue, licked it up, and began
smoking. The maid came in with a tray.

'Ah, here's lunch! Will you have an appetiser first? Victor, open the
bottle; that's in your line.'

'Yes, it's in my line,' muttered Sitnikov, and again he gave vent to
the same convulsive laugh.

'Are there any pretty women here?' inquired Bazarov, as he drank off a
third glass.

'Yes, there are,' answered Evdoksya; 'but they're all such empty-headed
creatures. _Mon amie_, Odintsova, for instance, is nice-looking. It's a
pity her reputation's rather doubtful.... That wouldn't matter, though,
but she's no independence in her views, no width, nothing ... of all
that. The whole system of education wants changing. I've thought a
great deal about it, our women are very badly educated.'

'There's no doing anything with them,' put in Sitnikov; 'one ought to
despise them, and I do despise them fully and completely!' (The
possibility of feeling and expressing contempt was the most agreeable
sensation to Sitnikov; he used to attack women in especial, never
suspecting that it was to be his fate a few months later to be cringing
before his wife merely because she had been born a princess
Durdoleosov.) 'Not a single one of them would be capable of
understanding our conversation; not a single one deserves to be spoken
of by serious men like us!'

'But there's not the least need for them to understand our
conversation,' observed Bazarov.

'Whom do you mean?' put in Evdoksya.

'Pretty women.'

'What? Do you adopt Proudhon's ideas, then?'

Bazarov drew himself up haughtily. 'I don't adopt any one's ideas; I
have my own.'

'Damn all authorities!' shouted Sitnikov, delighted to have a chance of
expressing himself boldly before the man he slavishly admired.

'But even Macaulay,' Madame Kukshin was beginning ...

'Damn Macaulay,' thundered Sitnikov. 'Are you going to stand up for the
silly hussies?'

'For silly hussies, no, but for the rights of women, which I have sworn
to defend to the last drop of my blood.'

'Damn!'--but here Sitnikov stopped. 'But I don't deny them,' he said.

'No, I see you're a Slavophil.'

'No, I'm not a Slavophil, though, of course ...'

'No, no, no! You are a Slavophil. You're an advocate of patriarchal
despotism. You want to have the whip in your hand!'

'A whip's an excellent thing,' remarked Bazarov; 'but we've got to the
last drop.'

'Of what?' interrupted Evdoksya.

'Of champagne, most honoured Avdotya Nikitishna, of champagne--not of
your blood.'

'I can never listen calmly when women are attacked,' pursued Evdoksya.
'It's awful, awful. Instead of attacking them, you'd better read
Michelet's book, _De l'amour_. That's exquisite! Gentlemen, let us talk
of love,' added Evdoksya, letting her arm fall languidly on the rumpled
sofa cushion.

A sudden silence followed. 'No, why should we talk of love,' said
Bazarov; 'but you mentioned just now a Madame Odintsov ... That was
what you called her, I think? Who is that lady?'

'She's charming, charming!' piped Sitnikov. 'I will introduce you.
Clever, rich, a widow. It's a pity, she's not yet advanced enough; she
ought to see more of our Evdoksya. I drink to your health, _Evdoxie!_
Let us clink glasses! _Et toc, et toc, et tin-tin-tin! Et toc, et toc,
et tin-tin-tin!!!_'

'Victor, you're a wretch.'

The lunch dragged on a long while. The first bottle of champagne was
followed by another, a third, and even a fourth.... Evdoksya chattered
without pause; Sitnikov seconded her. They had much discussion upon the
question whether marriage was a prejudice or a crime, and whether men
were born equal or not, and precisely what individuality consists in.
Things came at last to Evdoksya, flushed from the wine she had drunk,
tapping with her flat finger-tips on the keys of a discordant piano,
and beginning to sing in a hoarse voice, first gipsy songs, and then
Seymour Schiff's song, 'Granada lies slumbering'; while Sitnikov tied a
scarf round his head, and represented the dying lover at the words--

  'And thy lips to mine
   In burning kiss entwine.'

Arkady could not stand it at last. 'Gentlemen, it's getting something
like Bedlam,' he remarked aloud. Bazarov, who had at rare intervals put
in an ironical word in the conversation--he paid more attention to the
champagne--gave a loud yawn, got up, and, without taking leave of their
hostess, he walked off with Arkady. Sitnikov jumped up and followed
them.

'Well, what do you think of her?' he inquired, skipping obsequiously
from right to left of them. 'I told you, you see, a remarkable
personality! If we only had more women like that! She is, in her own
way, an expression of the highest morality.'

'And is that establishment of your governor's an expression of the
highest morality too?' observed Bazarov, pointing to a ginshop which
they were passing at that instant.

Sitnikov again went off into a shrill laugh. He was greatly ashamed of
his origin, and did not know whether to feel flattered or offended at
Bazarov's unexpected familiarity.




CHAPTER XIV


A few days later the ball at the Governor's took place. Matvy Ilyitch
was the real 'hero of the occasion.' The marshal of nobility declared
to all and each that he had come simply out of respect for him; while
the Governor, even at the ball, even while he remained perfectly
motionless, was still 'making arrangements.' The affability of Matvy
Ilyitch's demeanour could only be equalled by its dignity. He was
gracious to all, to some with a shade of disgust, to others with a
shade of respect; he was all bows and smiles '_en vrai chevalier
français_' before the ladies, and was continually giving vent to a
hearty, sonorous, unshared laugh, such as befits a high official. He
slapped Arkady on the back, and called him loudly 'nephew'; vouchsafed
Bazarov--who was attired in a rather old evening coat--a sidelong
glance in passing--absent but condescending--and an indistinct but
affable grunt, in which nothing could be distinguished but 'I ...' and
'very much'; gave Sitnikov a finger and a smile, though with his head
already averted; even to Madame Kukshin, who made her appearance at the
ball with dirty gloves, no crinoline, and a bird of Paradise in her
hair, he said '_enchanté_.' There were crowds of people, and no lack of
dancing men; the civilians were for the most part standing close along
the walls, but the officers danced assiduously, especially one of them
who had spent six weeks in Paris, where he had mastered various daring
interjections of the kind of--'_zut_,' '_Ah, fichtr-re_,' '_pst, pst,
mon bibi_,' and such. He pronounced them to perfection with genuine
Parisian _chic_, and at the same time he said '_si j'aurais_' for '_si
j'avais_,' '_absolument_' in the sense of 'absolutely,' expressed
himself, in fact, in that Great Russo-French jargon which the French
ridicule so when they have no reason for assuring us that we speak
French like angels, '_comme des anges_.'

Arkady, as we are aware, danced badly, while Bazarov did not dance at
all; they both took up their position in a corner; Sitnikov joined
himself on to them, with an expression of contemptuous scorn on his
face, and giving vent to spiteful comments, he looked insolently about
him, and seemed to be really enjoying himself. Suddenly his face
changed, and turning to Arkady, he said, with some show of
embarrassment it seemed, 'Odintsova is here!'

Arkady looked round, and saw a tall woman in a black dress standing at
the door of the room. He was struck by the dignity of her carriage. Her
bare arms lay gracefully beside her slender waist; gracefully some
light sprays of fuchsia drooped from her shining hair on to her sloping
shoulders; her clear eyes looked out from under a rather overhanging
white brow, with a tranquil and intelligent expression--tranquil it was
precisely, not pensive--and on her lips was a scarcely perceptible
smile. There was a kind of gracious and gentle force about her face.

'Do you know her?' Arkady asked Sitnikov.

'Intimately. Would you like me to introduce you?'

'Please ... after this quadrille.'

Bazarov's attention, too, was directed to Madame Odintsov.

'That's a striking figure,' he remarked. 'Not like the other females.'

After waiting till the end of the quadrille, Sitnikov led Arkady up to
Madame Odintsov; but he hardly seemed to be intimately acquainted with
her; he was embarrassed in his sentences, while she looked at him in
some surprise. But her face assumed an expression of pleasure when she
heard Arkady's surname. She asked him whether he was not the son of
Nikolai Petrovitch.

'Yes.'

'I have seen your father twice, and have heard a great deal about him,'
she went on; 'I am glad to make your acquaintance.'

At that instant some adjutant flew up to her and begged for a
quadrille. She consented.

'Do you dance then?' asked Arkady respectfully.

'Yes, I dance. Why do you suppose I don't dance? Do you think I am too
old?'

'Really, how could I possibly.... But in that case, let me ask you for
a mazurka.'

Madame Odintsov smiled graciously. 'Certainly,' she said, and she
looked at Arkady not exactly with an air of superiority, but as married
sisters look at very young brothers. Madame Odintsov was a little older
than Arkady--she was twenty-nine--but in her presence he felt himself a
schoolboy, a little student, so that the difference in age between them
seemed of more consequence. Matvy Ilyitch approached her with a
majestic air and ingratiating speeches. Arkady moved away, but he still
watched her; he could not take his eyes off her even during the
quadrille. She talked with equal ease to her partner and to the grand
official, softly turned her head and eyes, and twice laughed softly.
Her nose--like almost all Russian noses--was a little thick; and her
complexion was not perfectly clear; Arkady made up his mind, for all
that, that he had never before met such an attractive woman. He could
not get the sound of her voice out of his ears; the very folds of her
dress seemed to hang upon her differently from all the rest--more
gracefully and amply--and her movements were distinguished by a
peculiar smoothness and naturalness.

Arkady felt some timidity in his heart when at the first sounds of the
mazurka he began to sit it out beside his partner; he had prepared to
enter into a conversation with her, but he only passed his hand through
his hair, and could not find a single word to say. But his timidity and
agitation did not last long; Madame Odintsov's tranquillity gained upon
him too; before a quarter of an hour had passed he was telling her
freely about his father, his uncle, his life in Petersburg and in the
country. Madame Odintsov listened to him with courteous sympathy,
slightly opening and closing her fan; his talk was broken off when
partners came for her; Sitnikov, among others, twice asked her. She
came back, sat down again, took up her fan, and her bosom did not even
heave more rapidly, while Arkady fell to chattering again, filled
through and through by the happiness of being near her, talking to her,
looking at her eyes, her lovely brow, all her sweet, dignified, clever
face. She said little, but her words showed a knowledge of life; from
some of her observations Arkady gathered that this young woman had
already felt and thought much....

'Who is that you were standing with?' she asked him, 'when Mr. Sitnikov
brought you to me?'

'Did you notice him?' Arkady asked in his turn. 'He has a splendid
face, hasn't he? That's Bazarov, my friend.'

Arkady fell to discussing 'his friend.' He spoke of him in such detail,
and with such enthusiasm, that Madame Odintsov turned towards him and
looked attentively at him. Meanwhile, the mazurka was drawing to a
close. Arkady felt sorry to part from his partner; he had spent nearly
an hour so happily with her! He had, it is true, during the whole time
continually felt as though she were condescending to him, as though he
ought to be grateful to her ... but young hearts are not weighed down
by that feeling.

The music stopped. '_Merci_,' said Madame Odintsov, getting up. 'You
promised to come and see me; bring your friend with you. I shall be
very curious to see the man who has the courage to believe in nothing.'

The Governor came up to Madame Odintsov, announced that supper was
ready, and, with a careworn face, offered her his arm. As she went
away, she turned to give a last smile and bow to Arkady. He bowed low,
looked after her (how graceful her figure seemed to him, draped in the
greyish lustre of the black silk!), and thinking, 'This minute she has
forgotten my existence,' was conscious of an exquisite humility in his
soul.

'Well?' Bazarov questioned him, directly he had gone back to him in the
corner. 'Did you have a good time? A gentleman has just been talking to
me about that lady; he said, "She's--oh, fie! fie!" but I fancy the
fellow was a fool. What do you think, what is she?--oh, fie! fie!'

'I don't quite understand that definition,' answered Arkady.

'Oh, my! What innocence!'

'In that case, I don't understand the gentleman you quote. Madame
Odintsov is very sweet, no doubt, but she behaves so coldly and
severely, that....'

'Still waters ... you know!' put in Bazarov. 'That's just what gives it
piquancy. You like ices, I expect?'

'Perhaps,' muttered Arkady. 'I can't give an opinion about that. She
wishes to make your acquaintance, and has asked me to bring you to see
her.'

'I can imagine how you've described me! But you did very well. Take me.
Whatever she may be--whether she's simply a provincial lioness, or
"advanced" after Kukshina's fashion--any way she's got a pair of
shoulders such as I've not set eyes on for a long while.'

Arkady was wounded by Bazarov's cynicism, but--as often happens--he
reproached his friend not precisely for what he did not like in him ...

'Why are you unwilling to allow freethinking in women?' he said in a
low voice.

'Because, my boy, as far as my observations go, the only freethinkers
among women are frights.'

The conversation was cut short at this point. Both the young men went
away immediately after supper. They were pursued by a nervously
malicious, but somewhat faint-hearted laugh from Madame Kukshin; her
vanity had been deeply wounded by neither of them having paid any
attention to her. She stayed later than any one at the ball, and at
four o'clock in the morning she was dancing a polka-mazurka with
Sitnikov in the Parisian style. This edifying spectacle was the final
event of the Governor's ball.




CHAPTER XV


'Let's see what species of mammalia this specimen belongs to,' Bazarov
said to Arkady the following day, as they mounted the staircase of the
hotel in which Madame Odintsov was staying. 'I scent out something
wrong here.'

'I'm surprised at you!' cried Arkady. 'What? You, you, Bazarov,
clinging to the narrow morality, which ...'

'What a funny fellow you are!' Bazarov cut him short, carelessly.
'Don't you know that "something wrong" means "something right" in my
dialect and for me? It's an advantage for me, of course. Didn't you
tell me yourself this morning that she made a strange marriage, though,
to my mind, to marry a rich old man is by no means a strange thing to
do, but, on the contrary, very sensible. I don't believe the gossip of
the town; but I should like to think, as our cultivated Governor says,
that it's well-grounded.'

Arkady made no answer, and knocked at the door of the apartments. A
young servant in livery, conducted the two friends in to a large room,
badly furnished, like all rooms in Russian hotels, but filled with
flowers. Soon Madame Odintsov herself appeared in a simple morning
dress. She seemed still younger by the light of the spring sunshine.
Arkady presented Bazarov, and noticed with secret amazement that he
seemed embarrassed, while Madame Odintsov remained perfectly tranquil,
as she had been the previous day. Bazarov himself was conscious of
being embarrassed, and was irritated by it. 'Here's a go!--frightened
of a petticoat!' he thought, and lolling, quite like Sitnikov, in an
easy-chair, he began talking with an exaggerated appearance of ease,
while Madame Odintsov kept her clear eyes fixed on him.

Anna Sergyevna Odintsov was the daughter of Sergay Nikolaevitch Loktev,
notorious for his personal beauty, his speculations, and his gambling
propensities, who after cutting a figure and making a sensation for
fifteen years in Petersburg and Moscow, finished by ruining himself
completely at cards, and was forced to retire to the country, where,
however, he soon after died, leaving a very small property to his two
daughters--Anna, a girl of twenty, and Katya, a child of twelve. Their
mother, who came of an impoverished line of princes--the H----s-- had
died at Petersburg when her husband was in his heydey. Anna's position
after her father's death was very difficult. The brilliant education
she had received in Petersburg had not fitted her for putting up with
the cares of domestic life and economy,--for an obscure existence in
the country. She knew positively no one in the whole neighbourhood, and
there was no one she could consult. Her father had tried to avoid all
contact with the neighbours; he despised them in his way, and they
despised him in theirs. She did not lose her head, however, and
promptly sent for a sister of her mother's Princess Avdotya Stepanovna
H----, a spiteful and arrogant old lady, who, on installing herself in
her niece's house, appropriated all the best rooms for her own use,
scolded and grumbled from morning till night, and would not go a walk
even in the garden unattended by her one serf, a surly footman in a
threadbare pea-green livery with light blue trimming and a
three-cornered hat. Anna put up patiently with all her aunt's whims,
gradually set to work on her sister's education, and was, it seemed,
already getting reconciled to the idea of wasting her life in the
wilds.... But destiny had decreed another fate for her. She chanced to
be seen by Odintsov, a very wealthy man of forty-six, an eccentric
hypochondriac, stout, heavy, and sour, but not stupid, and not
ill-natured; he fell in love with her, and offered her his hand. She
consented to become his wife, and he lived six years with her, and on
his death settled all his property upon her. Anna Sergyevna remained in
the country for nearly a year after his death; then she went abroad
with her sister, but only stopped in Germany; she got tired of it, and
came back to live at her favourite Nikolskoe, which was nearly thirty
miles from the town of X----. There she had a magnificent, splendidly
furnished house and a beautiful garden, with conservatories; her late
husband had spared no expense to gratify his fancies. Anna Sergyevna
went very rarely to the town, generally only on business, and even then
she did not stay long. She was not liked in the province; there had
been a fearful outcry at her marriage with Odintsov, all sorts of
fictions were told about her; it was asserted that she had helped her
father in his cardsharping tricks, and even that she had gone abroad
for excellent reasons, that it had been necessary to conceal the
lamentable consequences ... 'You understand?' the indignant gossips
would wind up. 'She has gone through the fire,' was said of her; to
which a noted provincial wit usually added: 'And through all the other
elements?' All this talk reached her; but she turned a deaf ear to it;
there was much independence and a good deal of determination in her
character.

Madame Odintsov sat leaning back in her easy-chair, and listened with
folded hands to Bazarov. He, contrary to his habit, was talking a good
deal, and obviously trying to interest her--again a surprise for
Arkady. He could not make up his mind whether Bazarov was attaining his
object. It was difficult to conjecture from Anna Sergyevna's face what
impression was being made on her; it retained the same expression,
gracious and refined; her beautiful eyes were lighted up by attention,
but by quiet attention. Bazarov's bad manners had impressed her
unpleasantly for the first minutes of the visit like a bad smell or a
discordant sound; but she saw at once that he was nervous, and that
even flattered her. Nothing was repulsive to her but vulgarity, and no
one could have accused Bazarov of vulgarity. Arkady was fated to meet
with surprises that day. He had expected that Bazarov would talk to a
clever woman like Madame Odintsov about his opinions and his views; she
had herself expressed a desire to listen to the man 'who dares to have
no belief in anything'; but, instead of that, Bazarov talked about
medicine, about homoeopathy, and about botany. It turned out that
Madame Odintsov had not wasted her time in solitude; she had read a
good many excellent books, and spoke herself in excellent Russian. She
turned the conversation upon music; but noticing that Bazarov did not
appreciate art, she quietly brought it back to botany, even though
Arkady was just launching into a discourse upon the significance of
national melodies. Madame Odintsov treated him as though he were a
younger brother; she seemed to appreciate his good-nature and youthful
simplicity--and that was all. For over three hours, a lively
conversation was kept up, ranging freely over various subjects.

The friends at last got up and began to take leave. Anna Sergyevna
looked cordially at them, held out her beautiful, white hand to both,
and, after a moment's thought, said with a doubtful but delightful
smile. 'If you are not afraid of being dull, gentlemen, come and see me
at Nikolskoe.'

'Oh, Anna Sergyevna,' cried Arkady, 'I shall think it the greatness
happiness ...'

'And you, Monsieur Bazarov?'

Bazarov only bowed, and a last surprise was in store for Arkady; he
noticed that his friend was blushing.

'Well?' he said to him in the street; 'are you still of the same
opinion--that she's ...'

'Who can tell? See how correct she is!' retorted Bazarov; and after a
brief pause he added, 'She's a perfect grand-duchess, a royal
personage. She only needs a train on behind, and a crown on her head.'

'Our grand-duchesses don't talk Russian like that,' remarked Arkady.

'She's seen ups and downs, my dear boy; she's known what it is to be
hard up!'

'Any way, she's charming,' observed Arkady.

'What a magnificent body!' pursued Bazarov. 'Shouldn't I like to see it
on the dissecting-table.'

'Hush, for mercy's sake, Yevgeny! that's beyond everything.'

'Well, don't get angry, you baby. I meant it's first-rate. We must go
to stay with her.'

'When?'

'Well, why not the day after to-morrow. What is there to do here? Drink
champagne with Kukshina. Listen to your cousin, the Liberal
dignitary?... Let's be off the day after to-morrow. By the way, too--my
father's little place is not far from there. This Nikolskoe's on the
S---- road, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

'Optime, why hesitate? leave that to fools and prigs! I say, what a
splendid body!'

Three days later the two friends were driving along the road to
Nikolskoe. The day was bright, and not too hot, and the sleek
posting-horses trotted smartly along, switching their tied and plaited
tails. Arkady looked at the road, and not knowing why, he smiled.

'Congratulate me,' cried Bazarov suddenly, 'to-day's the 22nd of June,
my guardian angel's day. Let's see how he will watch over me. To-day
they expect me home,' he added, dropping his voice.... 'Well, they can
go on expecting.... What does it matter!'




CHAPTER XVI


The country-house in which Anna Sergyevna lived stood on an exposed
hill at no great distance from a yellow stone church with a green roof,
white columns, and a fresco over the principal entrance representing
the 'Resurrection of Christ' in the 'Italian' style. Sprawling in the
foreground of the picture was a swarthy warrior in a helmet, specially
conspicuous for his rotund contours. Behind the church a long village
stretched in two rows, with chimneys peeping out here and there above
the thatched roofs. The manor-house was built in the same style as the
church, the style known among us as that of Alexander; the house too
was painted yellow, and had a green roof, and white columns, and a
pediment with an escutcheon on it. The architect had designed both
buildings with the approval of the deceased Odintsov, who could not
endure--as he expressed it--idle and arbitrary innovations. The house
was enclosed on both sides by the dark trees of an old garden; an
avenue of lopped pines led up to the entrance.

Our friends were met in the hall by two tall footmen in livery; one of
them at once ran for the steward. The steward, a stout man in a black
dress coat, promptly appeared and led the visitors by a staircase
covered with rugs to a special room, in which two bedsteads were
already prepared for them with all necessaries for the toilet. It was
clear that order reigned supreme in the house; everything was clean,
everywhere there was a peculiar delicate fragrance, just as there is in
the reception rooms of ministers.

'Anna Sergyevna asks you to come to her in half-an-hour,' the steward
announced; 'will there be orders to give meanwhile?'

'No orders,' answered Bazarov; 'perhaps you will be so good as to
trouble yourself to bring me a glass of vodka.'

'Yes, sir,' said the steward, looking in some perplexity, and he
withdrew, his boots creaking as he walked.

'What _grand genre_!' remarked Bazarov. 'That's what it's called in
your set, isn't it? She's a grand-duchess, and that's all about it.'

'A nice grand-duchess,' retorted Arkady, 'at the very first meeting she
invited such great aristocrats as you and me to stay with her.'

'Especially me, a future doctor, and a doctor's son, and a village
sexton's grandson.... You know, I suppose, I'm the grandson of a
sexton? Like the great Speransky,' added Bazarov after a brief pause,
contracting his lips. 'At any rate she likes to be comfortable; oh,
doesn't she, this lady! Oughtn't we to put on evening dress?'

Arkady only shrugged his shoulders ... but he too was conscious of a
little nervousness.

Half-an-hour later Bazarov and Arkady went together into the
drawing-room. It was a large lofty room, furnished rather luxuriously
but without particularly good taste. Heavy expensive furniture stood in
the ordinary stiff arrangement along the walls, which were covered with
cinnamon-coloured paper with gold flowers on it; Odintsov had ordered
the furniture from Moscow through a friend and agent of his, a spirit
merchant. Over a sofa in the centre of one wall hung a portrait of a
faded light-haired man--and it seemed to look with displeasure at the
visitors. 'It must be the late lamented,' Bazarov whispered to Arkady,
and turning up his nose, he added, 'Hadn't we better bolt ...?' But at
that instant the lady of the house entered. She wore a light barège
dress; her hair smoothly combed back behind her ears gave a girlish
expression to her pure and fresh face.

'Thank you for keeping your promise,' she began. 'You must stay a
little while with me; it's really not bad here. I will introduce you to
my sister; she plays the piano well. That is a matter of indifference
to you, Monsieur Bazarov; but you, I think, Monsieur Kirsanov, are fond
of music. Besides my sister I have an old aunt living with me, and one
of our neighbours comes in sometimes to play cards; that makes up all
our circle. And now let us sit down.'

Madame Odintsov delivered all this little speech with peculiar
precision, as though she had learned it by heart; then she turned to
Arkady. It appeared that her mother had known Arkady's mother, and had
even been her confidante in her love for Nikolai Petrovitch. Arkady
began talking with great warmth of his dead mother; while Bazarov fell
to turning over albums. 'What a tame cat I'm getting!' he was thinking
to himself.

A beautiful greyhound with a blue collar on, ran into the drawing-room,
tapping on the floor with his paws, and after him entered a girl of
eighteen, black-haired and dark-skinned, with a rather round but
pleasing face, and small dark eyes. In her hands she held a basket
filled with flowers.

'This is my Katya,' said Madame Odintsov, indicating her with a motion
of her head. Katya made a slight curtsey, placed herself beside her
sister, and began picking out flowers. The greyhound, whose name was
Fifi, went up to both of the visitors, in turn wagging his tail, and
thrusting his cold nose into their hands.

'Did you pick all that yourself?' asked Madame Odintsov.

'Yes,' answered Katya.

'Is auntie coming to tea?'

'Yes.'

When Katya spoke, she had a very charming smile, sweet, timid, and
candid, and looked up from under her eyebrows with a sort of humorous
severity. Everything about her was still young and undeveloped; the
voice, and the bloom on her whole face, and the rosy hands, with white
palms, and the rather narrow shoulders.... She was constantly blushing
and getting out of breath.

Madame Odintsov turned to Bazarov. 'You are looking at pictures from
politeness, Yevgeny Vassilyitch,' she began. That does not interest
you. You had better come nearer to us, and let us have a discussion
about something.'

Bazarov went closer. 'What subject have you decided upon for
discussion?' he said.

'What you like. I warn you, I am dreadfully argumentative.'

'You?'

'Yes. That seems to surprise you. Why?'

'Because, as far as I can judge, you have a calm, cool character, and
one must be impulsive to be argumentative.'

'How can you have had time to understand me so soon? In the first
place, I am impatient and obstinate--you should ask Katya; and
secondly, I am very easily carried away.'

Bazarov looked at Anna Sergyevna. 'Perhaps; you must know best. And so
you are inclined for a discussion--by all means. I was looking through
the views of the Saxon mountains in your album, and you remarked that
that couldn't interest me. You said so, because you suppose me to have
no feeling for art, and as a fact I haven't any; but these views might
be interesting to me from a geological standpoint, for the formation of
the mountains, for instance.'

'Excuse me; but as a geologist, you would sooner have recourse to a
book, to a special work on the subject, and not to a drawing.'

'The drawing shows me at a glance what would be spread over ten pages
in a book.'

Anna Sergyevna was silent for a little.

'And so you haven't the least artistic feeling?' she observed, putting
her elbow on the table, and by that very action bringing her face
nearer to Bazarov. 'How can you get on without it?'

'Why, what is it wanted for, may I ask?'

'Well, at least to enable one to study and understand men.'

Bazarov smiled. 'In the first place, experience of life does that; and
in the second, I assure you, studying separate individuals is not worth
the trouble. All people are like one another, in soul as in body; each
of us has brain, spleen, heart, and lungs made alike; and the so-called
moral qualities are the same in all; the slight variations are of no
importance. A single human specimen is sufficient to judge of all by.
People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying
each individual birch-tree.'

Katya, who was arranging the flowers, one at a time in a leisurely
fashion, lifted her eyes to Bazarov with a puzzled look, and meeting
his rapid and careless glance, she crimsoned up to her ears. Anna
Sergyevna shook her head.

'The trees in a forest,' she repeated. 'Then according to you there is
no difference between the stupid and the clever person, between the
good-natured and ill-natured?'

'No, there is a difference, just as between the sick and the healthy.
The lungs of a consumptive patient are not in the same condition as
yours and mine, though they are made on the same plan. We know
approximately what physical diseases come from; moral diseases come
from bad education, from all the nonsense people's heads are stuffed
with from childhood up, from the defective state of society; in short,
reform society, and there will be no diseases.'

Bazarov said all this with an air, as though he were all the while
thinking to himself, 'Believe me or not, as you like, it's all one to
me!' He slowly passed his fingers over his whiskers, while his eyes
strayed about the room.

'And you conclude,' observed Anna Sergyevna, 'that when society is
reformed, there will be no stupid nor wicked people?'

'At any rate, in a proper organisation of society, it will be
absolutely the same whether a man is stupid or clever, wicked or good.'

'Yes, I understand; they will all have the same spleen.'

'Precisely so, madam.'

Madame Odintsov turned to Arkady. 'And what is your opinion, Arkady
Nikolaevitch?'

'I agree with Yevgeny,' he answered.

Katya looked up at him from under her eyelids.

'You amaze me, gentlemen,' commented Madame Odintsov, 'but we will have
more talk together. But now I hear my aunt coming to tea; we must spare
her.'

Anna Sergyevna's aunt, Princess H----, a thin little woman with a
pinched-up face, drawn together like a fist, and staring
ill-natured-looking eyes under a grey front, came in, and, scarcely
bowing to the guests, she dropped into a wide velvet covered arm-chair,
upon which no one but herself was privileged to sit. Katya put a
footstool under her feet; the old lady did not thank her, did not even
look at her, only her hands shook under the yellow shawl, which almost
covered her feeble body. The Princess liked yellow; her cap, too, had
bright yellow ribbons.

'How have you slept, aunt?' inquired Madame Odintsov, raising her
voice.

'That dog in here again,' the old lady muttered in reply, and noticing
Fifi was making two hesitating steps in her direction, she cried,
'Ss----ss!'

Katya called Fifi and opened the door for him.

Fifi rushed out delighted, in the expectation of being taken out for a
walk; but when he was left alone outside the door, he began scratching
and whining. The princess scowled. Katya was about to go out....

'I expect tea is ready,' said Madame Odintsov.

'Come gentlemen; aunt, will you go in to tea?'

The princess got up from her chair without speaking and led the way out
of the drawing-room. They all followed her in to the dining-room. A
little page in livery drew back, with a scraping sound, from the table,
an arm-chair covered with cushions, devoted to the princess's use; she
sank into it; Katya in pouring out the tea handed her first a cup
emblazoned with a heraldic crest. The old lady put some honey in her
cup (she considered it both sinful and extravagant to drink tea with
sugar in it, though she never spent a farthing herself on anything),
and suddenly asked in a hoarse voice, 'And what does Prince Ivan
write?'

No one made her any reply. Bazarov and Arkady soon guessed that they
paid no attention to her though they treated her respectfully.

'Because of her grand family,' thought Bazarov....

After tea, Anna Sergyevna suggested they should go out for a walk; but
it began to rain a little, and the whole party, with the exception of
the princess, returned to the drawing-room. The neighbour, the devoted
card-player, arrived; his name was Porfiry Platonitch, a stoutish,
greyish man with short, spindly legs, very polite and ready to be
amused. Anna Sergyevna, who still talked principally with Bazarov,
asked him whether he'd like to try a contest with them in the
old-fashioned way at preference? Bazarov assented, saying 'that he
ought to prepare himself beforehand for the duties awaiting him as a
country doctor.'

'You must be careful,' observed Anna Sergyevna; 'Porfiry Platonitch and
I will beat you. And you, Katya,' she added, 'play something to Arkady
Nikolaevitch; he is fond of music, and we can listen, too.'

Katya went unwillingly to the piano; and Arkady, though he certainly
was fond of music, unwillingly followed her; it seemed to him that
Madame Odintsov was sending him away, and already, like every young man
at his age, he felt a vague and oppressive emotion surging up in his
heart, like the forebodings of love. Katya raised the top of the piano,
and not looking at Arkady, she said in a low voice--

'What am I to play you?'

'What you like,' answered Arkady indifferently.

'What sort of music do you like best?' repeated Katya, without changing
her attitude.

'Classical,' Arkady answered in the same tone of voice.

'Do you like Mozart?'

'Yes, I like Mozart.'

Katya pulled out Mozart's Sonata-Fantasia in C minor. She played very
well, though rather over correctly and precisely. She sat upright and
immovable, her eyes fixed on the notes, and her lips tightly
compressed, only at the end of the sonata her face glowed, her hair
came loose, and a little lock fell on to her dark brow.

Arkady was particularly struck by the last part of the sonata, the part
in which, in the midst of the bewitching gaiety of the careless melody,
the pangs of such mournful, almost tragic suffering, suddenly break
in.... But the ideas stirred in him by Mozart's music had no reference
to Katya. Looking at her, he simply thought, 'Well, that young lady
doesn't play badly, and she's not bad-looking either.'

When she had finished the sonata, Katya without taking her hands from
the keys, asked, 'Is that enough?' Arkady declared that he could not
venture to trouble her again, and began talking to her about Mozart; he
asked her whether she had chosen that sonata herself, or some one had
recommended it to her. But Katya answered him in monosyllables; she
withdrew into herself, went back into her shell. When this happened to
her, she did not very quickly come out again; her face even assumed at
such times an obstinate, almost stupid expression. She was not exactly
shy, but diffident, and rather overawed by her sister, who had educated
her, and who had no suspicion of the fact. Arkady was reduced at last
to calling Fifi to him, and with an affable smile patting him on the
head to give himself an appearance of being at home.

Katya set to work again upon her flowers.

Bazarov meanwhile was losing and losing. Anna Sergyevna played cards in
masterly fashion; Porfiry Platonitch, too, could hold his own in the
game. Bazarov lost a sum which, though trifling in itself, was not
altogether pleasant for him. At supper Anna Sergyevna again turned the
conversation on botany.

'We will go for a walk to-morrow morning,' she said to him; 'I want you
to teach me the Latin names of the wild flowers and their species.'

'What use are the Latin names to you?' asked Bazarov.

'Order is needed in everything,' she answered.

'What an exquisite woman Anna Sergyevna is!' cried Arkady, when he was
alone with his friend in the room assigned to them.

'Yes,' answered Bazarov, 'a female with brains. Yes, and she's seen
life too.'

'In what sense do you mean that, Yevgeny Vassilyitch?'

'In a good sense, a good sense, my dear friend, Arkady Nikolaevitch!
I'm convinced she manages her estate capitally too. But what's splendid
is not her, but her sister.'

'What, that little dark thing?'

'Yes, that little dark thing. She now is fresh and untouched, and shy
and silent, and anything you like. She's worth educating and
developing. You might make something fine out of her; but the
other's--a stale loaf.'

Arkady made no reply to Bazarov, and each of them got into bed with
rather singular thoughts in his head.

Anna Sergyevna, too, thought of her guests that evening. She liked
Bazarov for the absence of gallantry in him, and even for his sharply
defined views. She found in him something new, which she had not
chanced to meet before, and she was curious.

Anna Sergyevna was a rather strange creature. Having no prejudices of
any kind, having no strong convictions even, she never gave way or went
out of her way for anything. She had seen many things very clearly; she
had been interested in many things, but nothing had completely
satisfied her; indeed, she hardly desired complete satisfaction. Her
intellect was at the same time inquiring and indifferent; her doubts
were never soothed to forgetfulness, and they never grew strong enough
to distract her. Had she not been rich and independent, she would
perhaps have thrown herself into the struggle, and have known passion.
But life was easy for her, though she was bored at times, and she went
on passing day after day with deliberation, never in a hurry, placid,
and only rarely disturbed. Dreams sometimes danced in rainbow colours
before her eyes even, but she breathed more freely when they died away,
and did not regret them. Her imagination indeed overstepped the limits
of what is reckoned permissible by conventional morality; but even then
her blood flowed as quietly as ever in her fascinatingly graceful,
tranquil body. Sometimes coming out of her fragrant bath all warm and
enervated, she would fall to musing on the nothingness of life, the
sorrow, the labour, the malice of it.... Her soul would be filled with
sudden daring, and would flow with generous ardour, but a draught would
blow from a half-closed window, and Anna Sergyevna would shrink into
herself, and feel plaintive and almost angry, and there was only one
thing she cared for at that instant--to get away from that horrid
draught.

Like all women who have not succeeded in loving, she wanted something,
without herself knowing what. Strictly speaking, she wanted nothing;
but it seemed to her that she wanted everything. She could hardly
endure the late Odintsov (she had married him from prudential motives,
though probably she would not have consented to become his wife if she
had not considered him a good sort of man), and had conceived a secret
repugnance for all men, whom she could only figure to herself as
slovenly, heavy, drowsy, and feebly importunate creatures. Once,
somewhere abroad, she had met a handsome young Swede, with a chivalrous
expression, with honest blue eyes under an open brow; he had made a
powerful impression on her, but it had not prevented her from going
back to Russia.

'A strange man this doctor!' she thought as she lay in her luxurious
bed on lace pillows under a light silk coverlet.... Anna Sergyevna had
inherited from her father a little of his inclination for splendour.
She had fondly loved her sinful but good-natured father, and he had
idolised her, used to joke with her in a friendly way as though she
were an equal, and to confide in her fully, to ask her advice. Her
mother she scarcely remembered.

'This doctor is a strange man!' she repeated to herself. She stretched,
smiled, clasped her hands behind her head, then ran her eyes over two
pages of a stupid French novel, dropped the book--and fell asleep, all
pure and cold, in her pure and fragrant linen.

The following morning Anna Sergyevna went off botanising with Bazarov
directly after lunch, and returned just before dinner; Arkady did not
go off anywhere, and spent about an hour with Katya. He was not bored
with her; she offered of herself to repeat the sonata of the day
before; but when Madame Odintsov came back at last, when he caught
sight of her, he felt an instantaneous pang at his heart. She came
through the garden with a rather tired step; her cheeks were glowing
and her eyes shining more brightly than usual under her round straw
hat. She was twirling in her fingers the thin stalk of a wildflower, a
light mantle had slipped down to her elbows, and the wide gray ribbons
of her hat were clinging to her bosom. Bazarov walked behind her,
self-confident and careless as usual, but the expression of his face,
cheerful and even friendly as it was, did not please Arkady. Muttering
between his teeth, 'Good-morning!' Bazarov went away to his room, while
Madame Odintsov shook Arkady's hand abstractedly, and also walked past
him.

'Good-morning!' thought Arkady ... 'As though we had not seen each
other already to-day!'




CHAPTER XVII


Time, it is well known, sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls
like a worm; but man is wont to be particularly happy when he does not
even notice whether it passes quickly or slowly. It was in that way
Arkady and Bazarov spent a fortnight at Madame Odintsov's. The good
order she had established in her house and in her life partly
contributed to this result. She adhered strictly to this order herself,
and forced others to submit to it. Everything during the day was done
at a fixed time. In the morning, precisely at eight o'clock, all the
party assembled for tea; from morning-tea till lunch-time every one did
what he pleased, the hostess herself was engaged with her bailiff (the
estate was on the rent-system), her steward, and her head housekeeper.
Before dinner the party met again for conversation or reading; the
evening was devoted to walking, cards, and music; at half-past ten Anna
Sergyevna retired to her own room, gave her orders for the following
day, and went to bed. Bazarov did not like this measured, somewhat
ostentatious punctuality in daily life, 'like moving along rails,' he
pronounced it to be; the footmen in livery, the decorous stewards,
offended his democratic sentiments. He declared that if one went so
far, one might as well dine in the English style at once--in tail-coats
and white ties. He once spoke plainly upon the subject to Anna
Sergyevna. Her attitude was such that no one hesitated to speak his
mind freely before her. She heard him out; and then her comment was,
'From your point of view, you are right--and perhaps, in that respect,
I am too much of a lady; but there's no living in the country without
order, one would be devoured by ennui,' and she continued to go her own
way. Bazarov grumbled, but the very reason life was so easy for him and
Arkady at Madame Odintsov's was that everything in the house 'moved on
rails.' For all that, a change had taken place in both the young men
since the first days of their stay at Nikolskoe. Bazarov, in whom Anna
Sergyevna was obviously interested, though she seldom agreed with him,
began to show signs of an unrest, unprecedented in him; he was easily
put out of temper, and unwilling to talk, he looked irritated, and
could not sit still in one place, just as though he were possessed by
some secret longing; while Arkady, who had made up his mind
conclusively that he was in love with Madame Odintsov, had begun to
yield to a gentle melancholy. This melancholy did not, however, prevent
him from becoming friendly with Katya; it even impelled him to get into
friendly, affectionate terms with her. '_She_ does not appreciate me?
So be it!... But here is a good creature, who does not repulse me,' he
thought, and his heart again knew the sweetness of magnanimous
emotions. Katya vaguely realised that he was seeking a sort of
consolation in her company, and did not deny him or herself the
innocent pleasure of a half-shy, half-confidential friendship. They did
not talk to each other in Anna Sergyevna's presence; Katya always
shrank into herself under her sister's sharp eyes; while Arkady, as
befits a man in love, could pay attention to nothing else when near the
object of his passion; but he was happy with Katya alone. He was
conscious that he did not possess the power to interest Madame
Odintsov; he was shy and at a loss when he was left alone with her, and
she did not know what to say to him, he was too young f

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