atives of their requirements, their efforts! No;
the Russian people is not what you imagine it. Tradition it holds
sacred; it is a patriarchal people; it cannot live without faith ...'

'I'm not going to dispute that,' Bazarov interrupted. 'I'm even ready
to agree that in that you're right.'

'But if I am right ...'

'And, all the same, that proves nothing.'

'It just proves nothing,' repeated Arkady, with the confidence of a
practised chess-player, who has foreseen an apparently dangerous move
on the part of his adversary, and so is not at all taken aback by it.

'How does it prove nothing?' muttered Pavel Petrovitch, astounded. 'You
must be going against the people then?'

'And what if we are?' shouted Bazarov. 'The people imagine that, when
it thunders, the prophet Ilya's riding across the sky in his chariot.
What then? Are we to agree with them? Besides, the people's Russian;
but am I not Russian too?'

'No, you are not Russian, after all you have just been saying! I can't
acknowledge you as Russian.'

'My grandfather ploughed the land,' answered Bazarov with haughty
pride. 'Ask any one of your peasants which of us--you or me--he'd more
readily acknowledge as a fellow-countryman. You don't even know how to
talk to them.'

'While you talk to him and despise him at the same time.'

'Well, suppose he deserves contempt. You find fault with my attitude,
but how do you know that I have got it by chance, that it's not a
product of that very national spirit, in the name of which you wage war
on it?'

'What an idea! Much use in nihilists!'

'Whether they're of use or not, is not for us to decide. Why, even you
suppose you're not a useless person.'

'Gentlemen, gentlemen, no personalities, please!' cried Nikolai
Petrovitch, getting up.

Pavel Petrovitch smiled, and laying his hand on his brother's shoulder,
forced him to sit down again.

'Don't be uneasy,' he said; 'I shall not forget myself, just through
that sense of dignity which is made fun of so mercilessly by our
friend--our friend, the doctor. Let me ask,' he resumed, turning again
to Bazarov; 'you suppose, possibly, that your doctrine is a novelty?
That is quite a mistake. The materialism you advocate has been more
than once in vogue already, and has always proved insufficient ...'

'A foreign word again!' broke in Bazarov. He was beginning to feel
vicious, and his face assumed a peculiar coarse coppery hue. 'In the
first place, we advocate nothin