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 call 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