of the past. It's a
pity there's no one for him to fascinate here though. I kept staring at
his exquisite collars. They're like marble, and his chin's shaved
simply to perfection. Come, Arkady Nikolaitch, isn't that ridiculous?'

'Perhaps it is; 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,' pursued Bazarov, 'these old idealists,
they develop their nervous systems till they break down ... so balance
is lost. But good-night. In my room there's an English washstand, but
the door won't fasten. Anyway that ought to be encouraged--an English
washstand stands for progress!'

Bazarov went away, and a sense of great happiness came over Arkady.
Sweet it is to fall asleep in one's own home, in the familiar bed,
under the quilt worked by loving hands, perhaps a dear nurse's hands,
those kind, tender, untiring hands. Arkady remembered Yegorovna, and
sighed and wished her peace in heaven.... For himself he made no
prayer.

Both he and Bazarov were soon asleep, but others in the house were
awake long after. His son's return had agitated Nikolai Petrovitch. He
lay down in bed, but did not put out the candles, and his head propped
on his hand, he fell into long reveries. His brother was sitting long
after midnight in his study, in a wide armchair before the fireplace,
on which there smouldered some faintly glowing embers. Pavel Petrovitch
was not undressed, only some red Chinese slippers had replaced the kid
shoes on his feet. He held in his hand the last number of _Galignani_,
but he was not reading; he gazed fixedly into the grate, where a bluish
flame flickered, dying down, then flaring up again.... God knows where
his thoughts were rambling, but they were not rambling in the past
only; the expression of his face was concentrated and surly, which is
not the way when a man is absorbed solely in recollections. In a small
back room there sat, on a large chest, a young woman in a blue dressing
jacket with a white kerchief thrown over her dark hair, Fenitchka. She
was half listening, half dozing, and often looked across towards the
open door through which a child's cradle was visible, and the regular