however, Turgenev persisted that
Bazaroff represented a type as he saw it, and the portrait was
neither a caricature nor entirely a product of the
imagination.

_I.--The Old and the New_

Arkady had come home, a full-blown graduate from the University at
Petersburg, and as his father, Nikolai Petrovitch pressed his lips to
his beardless, dusky, sunburnt cheek, he was beside himself with
delight. Even his uncle, Pavel Petrovitch--once a famous figure in
Russian society, and now, in spite of his dandy habits and dandy dress,
living with his brother on the latter's estate in the heart of the
country--showed some emotion. And Arkady, too, though he endeavoured to
stifle his feelings as became a superior young man who had risen above
the prejudices of the older generation, could not conceal the pleasure
he felt.

Arkady had brought back with him his great friend, Bazaroff, a tall man,
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--a face which was lighted up by a tranquil smile and showed
self-confidence and intelligence. Bazaroff alone seemed supremely
indifferent to the atmosphere of pleasure which pervaded his friend's
home-coming. As the two young men left the room, Pavel Petrovitch turned
to his brother with a slightly questioning look on his clear-cut,
clean-shaved, refined face.

"Who is he?" he asked.

"A friend of Arkady'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 degourde_," he remarked. "I am glad he has come back."

"Your uncle's a queer fish," Bazaroff remarked to Arkady, in the
seclusion of their room; "only fancy such style in the country! His
nails, his nails--you ought to send them to an exhibition! And as to his
chin, it's shaved simply to perfection. Now, come, Arkady, isn't he
rather ridiculous?"

"Perhaps he is," replied Arkady; "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,