Read Online Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev - Free Book Online Page B

Nikolay Petrovich had lost
his wife, Pavel Petrovich had lost his memories; after the princess’s death he tried not to think of her. But Nikolay had
     the consciousness of a well-spent life, he could watch his son growing up. Pavel on the other hand was a lonely bachelor and
     was coming to that troubled twilight time, a time of regrets that resemble hopes, of hopes that resemble regrets, when youth
     is past but old age has not yet come.
    This time was even more difficult for Pavel Petrovich than for others: in losing his past, he had lost everything.
    ‘I am not asking you now to Marino,’ Nikolay Petrovich once said to him (he had called his property by that name in honour
     of his wife), 3 ‘even when my wife was alive you were bored there, and now I think you’d die there of boredom.’
    ‘I was still foolish then, and restless,’ answered Pavel Petrovich, ‘I’ve settled down since then even if I haven’t grown
     wiser. But now, if you’ll let me, I’m ready to come and live with you for good.’
    Instead of answering, Nikolay Petrovich embraced him; but more than six months went by after this conversation before Pavel
     Petrovich decided to make good his intention. However, once having settled in the country, he didn’t again leave it, not even
     in those three winters which Nikolay Petrovich spent in Petersburg with his son. He began to read, mostly in English; generally
     speaking, he organized his whole life in the English manner; he saw little of the neighbours and only went out to attend the
     elections, during which he usually said nothing, just occasionally scaring landowners of the old sort with his liberal sallies,
     without getting closer to the representatives of the new generation. Both parties found him arrogant; and both respected him
     for his fine aristocratic manners and for his rumoured conquests; they respected him because he dressed beautifully and always
     stayed in the best room of the best hotel; because he generally dined well and had even once dined with Wellington at the
     table of King Louis-Philippe; 4 because he always travelled with a sterling silver dressing-case and a portable campaign bath; because he always smelt of
     an unusual, strikingly ‘noble’ scent; because he played a masterly game of whist and always lost; finally
they respected him too for his irreproachable honesty. The ladies found him a charming melancholic, but he had nothing to
     do with the ladies…
    ‘So you see, Yevgeny,’ said Arkady, finishing his story, ‘your view of my uncle is quite unfair! I’m not mentioning that he
     has several times got my father out of difficulties and given him all his money – perhaps you don’t know, their estate isn’t
     divided 5 – but he is ready to help anyone, and by the way he always speaks up for the peasants; it’s true, when he talks to them he
     wrinkles his nose and sniffs eau-de-cologne…’
    ‘It’s quite obvious: a case of nerves,’ Bazarov interrupted.
    ‘Maybe, only he has a very kind heart. And he’s far from stupid. He has given me really useful advice… especially… especially
     about relationships with women.’
    ‘Aha! He’s burnt himself on hot milk and now blows on other people’s water. An old story.’
    ‘Well, in a word,’ Arkady went on, ‘he is deeply unhappy, believe me; it’s wrong to despise him.’
    ‘Who is despising him?’ Bazarov countered. ‘But I’ll still say that an individual who has staked his whole life on the card
     of a woman’s love, who, when he’s lost that card, collapses and lets himself go so he’s no good for anything, isn’t a man,
     isn’t a male. You say he’s unhappy: you know best; but all the nonsense hasn’t been knocked out of him. I am certain he seriously
     imagines himself to be an intelligent man because he reads old Galignani 6 and once a month gets a peasant off a flogging.’
    ‘And remember his education, and the period when he lived,’ Arkady commented.
    ‘His