ow, our turn has come, and our successors can say to us,
"You are not of our generation; swallow your pill."'

'You are beyond everything in your generosity and modesty,' replied
Pavel Petrovitch. 'I'm convinced, on the contrary, that you and I are
far more in the right than these young gentlemen, though we do perhaps
express ourselves in old-fashioned language, _vieilli_, and have not
the same insolent conceit.... And the swagger of the young men
nowadays! You ask one, "Do you take red wine or white?" "It is my
custom to prefer red!" he answers in a deep bass, with a face as solemn
as if the whole universe had its eyes on him at that instant....'

'Do you care for any more tea?' asked Fenitchka, putting her head in at
the door; she had not been able to make up her mind to come into the
drawing-room while there was the sound of voices in dispute there.

'No, you can tell them to take the samovar,' answered Nikolai
Petrovitch, and he got up to meet her. Pavel Petrovitch said '_bon
soir_' to him abruptly, and went away to his study.

CHAPTER XI

Half an hour later Nikolai Petrovitch went into the garden to his
favourite arbour. He was overtaken by melancholy thoughts. For the
first time he realised clearly the distance between him and his son; he
foresaw that every day it would grow wider and wider. In vain, then,
had he spent whole days sometimes in the winter at Petersburg over the
newest books; in vain had he listened to the talk of the young men; in
vain had he rejoiced when he succeeded in putting in his word too in
their heated discussions. 'My brother says we are right,' he thought,
'and apart from all vanity, I do think myself that they are further
from the truth than we are, though at the same time I feel there is
something behind them we have not got, some superiority over us.... Is
it youth? No; not only youth. Doesn't their superiority consist in
there being fewer traces of the slaveowner in them than in us?'

Nikolai Petrovitch's head sank despondently, and he passed his hand
over his face.

'But to renounce poetry?' he thought again; 'to have no feeling for
art, for nature ...'

And he looked round, as though trying to understand how it was possible
to have no feeling for nature. It was already evening; the sun was
hidden behind a small copse of aspens which lay a quarter of a mile
from the garden; its shadow stretched indefinitely across the still
fields. A peasant on a white nag went at a