by him with great amiability,
negligence, and propriety. He holds Slavophil views; it is well known
that in the highest society this is regarded as _tres distingue_! He
reads nothing in Russian, but on his writing table there is a silver
ashpan in the shape of a peasant's plaited shoe. He is much run after
by our tourists. Matvy Ilyitch Kolyazin, happening to be in temporary
opposition, paid him a majestic visit; while the natives, with whom,
however, he is very little seen, positively grovel before him. No one
can so readily and quickly obtain a ticket for the court chapel, for
the theatre, and such things as _der Herr Baron von Kirsanoff_. He does
everything good-naturedly that he can; he still makes some little noise
in the world; it is not for nothing that he was once a great society
lion;--but life is a burden to him ... a heavier burden than he
suspects himself. One need but glance at him in the Russian church,
when, leaning against the wall on one side, he sinks into thought, and
remains long without stirring, bitterly compressing his lips, then
suddenly recollects himself, and begins almost imperceptibly crossing
himself....

Madame Kukshin, too, went abroad. She is in Heidelberg, and is now
studying not natural science, but architecture, in which, according to
her own account, she has discovered new laws. She still fraternises
with students, especially with the young Russians studying natural
science and chemistry, with whom Heidelberg is crowded, and who,
astounding the naive German professors at first by the soundness of
their views of things, astound the same professors no less in the
sequel by their complete inefficiency and absolute idleness. In company
with two or three such young chemists, who don't know oxygen from
nitrogen, but are filled with scepticism and self-conceit, and, too,
with the great Elisyevitch, Sitnikov roams about Petersburg, also
getting ready to be great, and in his own conviction continues the
'work' of Bazarov. There is a story that some one recently gave him a
beating; but he was avenged upon him; in an obscure little article,
hidden in an obscure little journal, he has hinted that the man who
beat him was a coward. He calls this irony. His father bullies him as
before, while his wife regards him as a fool ... and a literary man.

There is a small village graveyard in one of the remote corners of
Russia. Like almost all our graveyards, it presents a wretched
appearance; the ditch