Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume IV).djvu/107

 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.'