es, however, he did not hinder my speaking. Sometimes, too, it
seemed to me that the mysterious determination he had taken seemed to
be failing him and he appeared to be struggling with a new, seductive
stream of ideas. That was only at moments, but I made a note of it. I
suspected that he was longing to assert himself again, to come forth
from his seclusion, to show fight, to struggle to the last.

"_Cher,_ I could crush them!" broke from him on Thursday evening after his
second interview with Pyotr Stepanovitch, when he lay stretched on the
sofa with his head wrapped in a towel.

Till that moment he had not uttered one word all day.

_"Fils, fils, cher,"_ and so on, "I agree all those expressions are
nonsense, kitchen talk, and so be it. I see it for myself. I never gave
him food or drink, I sent him a tiny baby from Berlin to X province by
post, and all that, I admit it.... 'You gave me neither food nor drink,
and sent me by post,' he says, 'and what's more you've robbed me here.'"

"'But you unhappy boy,' I cried to him, 'my heart has been aching for
you all my life; though I did send you by post.' _Il rit._"

"But I admit it. I admit it, granted it was by post," he concluded,
almost in delirium.

_"Passons,"_ he began again, five minutes later. "I don't understand
Turgenev. That Bazarov of his is a fictitious figure, it does not exist
anywhere. The fellows themselves were the first to disown him as unlike
anyone. That Bazarov is a sort of indistinct mixture of Nozdryov and
Byron, _c'est le mot._ Look at them attentively: they caper about and
squeal with joy like puppies in the sun. They are happy, they are
victorious! What is there of Byron in them!... and with that, such
ordinariness! What a low-bred, irritable vanity! What an abject craving
to _faire du bruit autour de son nom,_ without noticing that _son
nom...._ Oh, it's a caricature! 'Surely,' I cried to him, 'you don't want
to offer yourself just as you are as a substitute for Christ?' _Il rit.
Il rit beaucoup. Il rit trop._ He has a strange smile. His mother had not
a smile like that. _Il rit toujours._"

Silence followed again.

"They are cunning; they were acting in collusion on Sunday," he blurted
out suddenly....

"Oh, not a doubt of it," I cried, pricking up my ears. "It was a got-up
thing and it was too transparent, and so badly acted."

"I don't mean that. Do you know that it was all too transparent
on purpose, that those... who had to, m