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?