and break with every prejudice; but to admit that his
brother, for instance, who steals handkerchiefs, is a thief--that's too
much for him. And when one comes to think of it: my brother, mine--and
no genius ... that's an idea no one can swallow.'

'It was a simple sense of justice spoke in me and not in the least
family feeling,' retorted Arkady passionately. 'But since that's a
sense you don't understand, since you haven't that sensation, you can't
judge of it.'

'In other words, Arkady Kirsanov is too exalted for my comprehension. I
bow down before him and say no more.'

'Don't, please, Yevgeny; we shall really quarrel at last.'

'Ah, Arkady! do me a kindness. I entreat you, let us quarrel for once
in earnest....'

'But then perhaps we should end by ...'

'Fighting?' put in Bazarov. 'Well? Here, on the hay, in these idyllic
surroundings, far from the world and the eyes of men, it wouldn't
matter. But you'd be no match for me. I'll have you by the throat in a
minute.'

Bazarov spread out his long, cruel fingers.... Arkady turned round and
prepared, as though in jest, to resist.... But his friend's face struck
him as so vindictive--there was such menace in grim earnest in the
smile that distorted his lips, and in his glittering eyes, that he felt
instinctively afraid.

'Ah! so this is where you have got to!' the voice of Vassily Ivanovitch
was heard saying at that instant, and the old army-doctor appeared
before the young men, garbed in a home-made linen pea-jacket, with a
straw hat, also home-made, on his head. 'I've been looking everywhere
for you.... Well, you've picked out a capital place, and you're
excellently employed. Lying on the "earth, gazing up to heaven." Do you
know, there's a special significance in that?'

'I never gaze up to heaven except when I want to sneeze,' growled
Bazarov, and turning to Arkady he added in an undertone. 'Pity he
interrupted us.'

'Come, hush!' whispered Arkady, and he secretly squeezed his friend's
hand. But no friendship can long stand such shocks.

'I look at you, my youthful friends,' Vassily Ivanovitch was saying
meantime, shaking his head, and leaning his folded arms on a rather
cunningly bent stick of his own carving, with a Turk's figure for a
top,--'I look, and I cannot refrain from admiration. You have so much
strength, such youth and bloom, such abilities, such talents!
Positively, a Castor and Pollux!'

'Get along with you--going off into mythology!' co