y long with us?'

'Perhaps. He came here on the way to his father's.'

'And where does his father live?'

'In our province, sixty-four miles from here. He has a small property
there. He was formerly an army doctor.'

'Tut, tut, tut! To be sure, I kept asking myself, "Where have I heard
that name, Bazarov?" Nikolai, do you remember, in our father's division
there was a surgeon Bazarov?'

'I believe there was.'

'Yes, yes, to be sure. So that surgeon was his father. Hm!' Pavel
Petrovitch pulled his moustaches. 'Well, and what is Mr. Bazarov
himself?' he asked, deliberately.

'What is Bazarov?' Arkady smiled. 'Would you like me, uncle, to tell
you what he really is?'

'If you will be so good, nephew.'

'He's a nihilist.'

'Eh?' inquired Nikolai Petrovitch, while Pavel Petrovitch lilted a
knife in the air with a small piece of butter on its tip, and remained
motionless.

'He's a nihilist,' repeated Arkady.

'A nihilist,' said Nikolai Petrovitch. 'That's from the Latin, _nihil_,
_nothing_, as far as I can judge; the word must mean a man who ... who
accepts nothing?'

'Say, "who respects nothing,"' put in Pavel Petrovitch, and he set to
work on the butter again.

'Who regards everything from the critical point of view,' observed
Arkady.

'Isn't that just the same thing?' inquired Pavel Petrovitch.

'No, it's not the same thing. A nihilist is a man who does not bow down
before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith,
whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in.'

'Well, and is that good?' interrupted Pavel Petrovitch.

'That depends, uncle. Some people it will do good to, but some people
will suffer for it.'

'Indeed. Well, I see it's not in our line. We are old-fashioned people;
we imagine that without principles, taken as you say on faith, there's
no taking a step, no breathing. _Vous avez change tout cela_. God give
you good health and the rank of a general, while we will be content to
look on and admire, worthy ... what was it?'

'Nihilists,' Arkady said, speaking very distinctly.

'Yes. There used to be Hegelists, and now there are nihilists. We shall
see how you will exist in void, in vacuum; and now ring, please,
brother Nikolai Petrovitch; it's time I had my cocoa.'

Nikolai Petrovitch rang the bell and called, 'Dunyasha!' But instead of
Dunyasha, Fenitchka herself came on to the terrace. She was a young
woman about three-and-twenty, with a white soft skin, dark h