Bazarov, returning, seated himself at the table, and fell to drinking tea. The brothers contemplated him in silence. Arkady glanced covertly from his father to his uncle, and back again.
“Have you walked far this morning?” at length Nikolai Petrovitch inquired.
“To a marsh beside an aspen coppice. By the way, Arkady, I flushed five head of woodcock. Perhaps you would like to go and shoot them?”
“Then you yourself are no sportsman?”
“No.”
“That is to say, you prefer physics to anything else?” This from Paul Petrovitch.
“Yes, I prefer physics—in fact, the natural sciences in general—to anything else.”
“Well, I am told that the Germanics have made great strides in that department?” (Paul Petrovitch used the term “Germanics” instead of “Germans” ironically, but no one noticed it.)
“True,” was Bazarov’s careless reply. “In fact, the Germans are, in the same respect, our masters.”
“You think highly of the Germans?” Paul Petrovitch’s tone was now studiously polite, for he was beginning to feel irritated with the man—his aristocratic nature could not altogether stomach Bazarov’s absolute lack of ceremony, the fact that this doctor’s son not only knew no diffidence, but actually returned snappish and reluctant answers, and infused a brusquerie akin to rudeness into his tone.
“At least the savants of that part of the world have some energy in them,” retorted Bazarov.
“Quite so. And your opinion of our Russian savants is—well, perhaps less flattering?”
“It is, with your leave.”
“That constitutes a piece of laudable modesty on your part,” Paul Petrovitch observed with a slight hitch of his figure and a toss of his head. “But how comes it about that Arkady has just told us that you recognise no authorities whatsoever? Do you not trust authorities?”
“Why should I? Is anything in the world trustworthy? Certainly, should I be told a fact, I agree with it, but that is all.”
“Oh! Then the Germans confine themselves solely to facts?” Paul Petrovitch’s face had now assumed an expression of detachment, as though he had suddenly become withdrawn to the ultimate heights of the empyrean.
“No, not all Germans,” replied Bazarov with a passing yawn. Clearly he had no mind to continue the controversy. Meanwhile Paul Petrovitch glanced at Arkady as much as to say: “Admit that your friend has beautiful manners!”
“For my own part,” he continued, ostentatiously, and with an effort, “I, a fallible mortal, do not favour the Germans. Of course, I am not including in that category the Russo-Germans, who, as we know, are birds of passage. Rather, it is the Germans of Germany proper whom I cannot abide. Once upon a time they used to produce men like Schiller and like—what’s his name?—Goethe: for both of which authors my brother has a marked predilection. But now the German nation has become a nation solely of chemists and materialists.”
“A good chemist is worth a score of your poets,” remarked Bazarov.
“Quite so.” Paul Petrovitch hitched his eyebrows a little, as though he had come near to falling asleep. “Er—I take it then that you decline to recognise art, but believe only in science?”
“I have told you that I believe in nothing at all. What after all, is science—that is to say, science in the mass? A science may exist, even as a trade or a profession may exist; but with regard to science in the mass, there is no such thing.”
“Very good. And, with regard to such other postulates as usually are granted in human affairs, the attitude which you adopt is negative in the same degree?”
“What is this?” suddenly countered Bazarov. “Is it an examination in tenets?”
Paul Petrovitch turned pale, and Nikolai Petrovitch thought it time to intervene in the dispute.
“Nay, we will debate the subject later,” he said. “And then, while recognising your views, good Evgenii Vasilitch, we will state our own. Individually speaking, I am delighted that you should be interested in the natural sciences. For instance, I am told that recently Liebig[1] has made some surprising discoveries in the matter of the improvement of soils. Consequently you might be able to help me in my agricultural labours, and to give me much useful advice.”
“Always I shall be at your service, Nikolai Petrovitch,” replied Bazarov. “But what has Liebig to do with us? First the alphabet should be learnt before we try to read books. We have not even reached the letter A.”
“You are a Nihilist—that is plain enough,” reflected Nikolai Petrovitch; while aloud he added: “Yet allow me to seek your occasional assistance. Brother Paul, I believe it is time that we interviewed our steward.”
Paul Petrovitch rose from his chair.
“Yes,” he said, without looking at any one in particular, “it is indeed a terrible thing to have lived five years in the country, and to have stood remote from superior intellects! If one is ab origine a fool, one becomes so more than ever, seeing that, however much one may try not to forget what one has learnt, there will dawn upon one, sooner or later, the revelation that one’s knowledge is all rubbish, that sensible men have ceased to engage in such futilities, and that one has lagged far behind the times. But, in such a case, what is one to do? Evidently the younger generation know more than we do.”
And, slowly turning on his heel, he moved away as slowly, with Nikolai Petrovitch following in his wake.
“Does Paul Petrovitch always reside here?” asked Bazarov when the door had closed upon the pair.
“Yes, he does. But look here, Evgenii. You adopted too sharp a tone with my uncle. You have offended him.”
“What? Am I to fawn upon these rustic aristocrats, even though their attitude is one purely of conceit and subservience to custom? If such be Paul Petrovitch’s bent, he had better have continued his career in St. Petersburg. Never mind him, however. Do you know, I have found a splendid specimen of the water beetle dytiscus marginatus. Are you acquainted with it? I will show it you.”
“Did I not promise to tell you his history?” observed Arkady musingly.
“Whose history? The water beetle’s?”
“No; my uncle’s. At least you will see from it that he is not the man you take him for, but a man who deserves pity rather than ridicule.”
“I am not prepared to dispute it. But how come you to be so devoted to him?”
“Always one ought to be fair.”
“The connection I do not see.”
“Then listen.”
And Arkady related the story to be found in the following chapter.
[1]Justus Freiherr von Liebig (1803-1873), the great German chemist—in particular, the founder of agricultural chemistry.