able, and began hastily drinking
tea. The two brothers looked at him in silence, while Arkady stealthily
watched first his father and then his uncle.

'Did you walk far from here?' Nikolai Petrovitch asked at last.

'Where you've a little swamp near the aspen wood. I started some
half-dozen snipe; you might slaughter them; Arkady.'

'Aren't you a sportsman then?'

'No.'

'Is your special study physics?' Pavel Petrovitch in his turn inquired.

'Physics, yes; and natural science in general.'

'They say the Teutons of late have had great success in that line.'

'Yes; the Germans are our teachers in it,' Bazarov answered carelessly.

The word Teutons instead of Germans, Pavel Petrovitch had used with
ironical intention; none noticed it however.

'Have you such a high opinion of the Germans?' said Pavel Petrovitch,
with exaggerated courtesy. He was beginning to feel a secret
irritation. His aristocratic nature was revolted by Bazarov's absolute
nonchalance. This surgeon's son was not only not overawed, he even gave
abrupt and indifferent answers, and in the tone of his voice there was
something churlish, almost insolent.

'The scientific men there are a clever lot.'

'Ah, ah. To be sure, of Russian scientific men you have not such a
flattering opinion, I dare say?'

'That is very likely.'

'That's very praiseworthy self-abnegation,' Pavel Petrovitch declared,
drawing himself up, and throwing his head back. 'But how is this?
Arkady Nikolaitch was telling us just now that you accept no
authorities? Don't you believe in _them_?'

'And how am I accepting them? And what am I to believe in? They tell me
the truth, I agree, that's all.'

'And do all Germans tell the truth?' said Pavel Petrovitch, and his
face assumed an expression as unsympathetic, as remote, as if he had
withdrawn to some cloudy height.

'Not all,' replied Bazarov, with a short yawn. He obviously did not
care to continue the discussion.

Pavel Petrovitch glanced at Arkady, as though he would say to him,
'Your friend's polite, I must say.' 'For my own part,' he began again,
not without some effort, 'I am so unregenerate as not to like Germans.
Russian Germans I am not speaking of now; we all know what sort of
creatures they are. But even German Germans are not to my liking. In
former days there were some here and there; they had--well, Schiller,
to be sure, Goethe ... my brother--he takes a particularly favourable
view of them.... But now the