e to read.'

'What ought I to give him?' asked Arkady.

'Oh, I think Buchner's _Stoff und Kraft_ to begin with.'

'I think so too,' observed Arkady approving, '_Stoff und Kraft_ is
written in popular language....'

'So it seems,' Nikolai Petrovitch said the same day after dinner to his
brother, as he sat in his study, 'you and I are behind the times, our
day's over. Well, well. Perhaps Bazarov is right; but one thing I
confess, makes me feel sore; I did so hope, precisely now, to get on to
such close intimate terms with Arkady, and it turns out I'm left
behind, and he has gone forward, and we can't understand one another.'

'How has he gone forward? And in what way is he so superior to us
already?' cried Pavel Petrovitch impatiently. 'It's that high and
mighty gentleman, that nihilist, who's knocked all that into his head.
I hate that doctor fellow; in my opinion, he's simply a quack; I'm
convinced, for all his tadpoles, he's not got very far even in
medicine.'

'No, brother, you mustn't say that; Bazarov is clever, and knows his
subject.'

'And his conceit's something revolting,' Pavel Petrovitch broke in
again.

'Yes,' observed Nikolai Petrovitch, 'he is conceited. But there's no
doing without that, it seems; only that's what I did not take into
account. I thought I was doing everything to keep up with the times; I
have started a model farm; I have done well by the peasants, so that I
am positively called a "Red Radical" all over the province; I read, I
study, I try in every way to keep abreast with the requirements of the
day--and they say my day's over. And, brother, I begin to think that it
is.'

'Why so?'

'I'll tell you why. This morning I was sitting reading Pushkin.... I
remember, it happened to be _The Gipsies_ ... all of a sudden Arkady
came up to me, and, without speaking, with such a kindly compassion on
his face, as gently as if I were a baby, took the book away from me,
and laid another before me--a German book ... smiled, and went away,
carrying Pushkin off with him.'

'Upon my word! What book did he give you?'

'This one here.'

And Nikolai Petrovitch pulled the famous treatise of Buchner, in the
ninth edition, out of his coat-tail pocket.

Pavel Petrovitch turned it over in his hands. 'Hm!' he growled. 'Arkady
Nikolaevitch is taking your education in hand. Well, did you try
reading it?'

'Yes, I tried it.'

'Well, what did you think of it?'

'Either I'm stupid, or it's all--non