“Well, at least to help one to know and understand people.”
Bazarov smiled.
“In the first place, experience of life does that, and in the second, I assure you the study of separate individuals is not worth the trouble it involves.
All people resemble each other, in soul as well as in body; each of us has a brain, spleen, heart and lungs of similar construction; the so-called moral qualities are the same in all of us; the slight variations are insignificant.
It is enough to have one single human specimen in order to judge all the others.
People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch tree.”
Katya, who was arranging the flowers one by one in a leisurely way, raised her eyes to Bazarov with a puzzled expression, and meeting his quick casual glance, she blushed right up to her ears.
Anna Sergeyevna shook her head.
“The trees in a forest,” she repeated. “Then according to you there is no difference between a stupid and an intelligent person, or between a good and a bad one.”
“No, there is a difference, as there is between the sick and the healthy.
The lungs of a consumptive person are not in the same condition as yours or mine, although their construction is the same.
We know more or less what causes physical ailments; but moral diseases are caused by bad education, by all the rubbish with which people’s heads are stuffed from childhood onwards, in short, by the disordered state of society.
Reform society, and there will be no diseases.”
Bazarov said all this with an air as though he were all the while thinking to himself.
“Believe me or not as you wish, it’s all the same to me!”
He slowly passed his long fingers over his whiskers and his eyes strayed round the room.
“And you suppose,” said Anna Sergeyevna, “that when society is reformed there will be no longer any stupid or wicked people?”
“At any rate, in a properly organized society it will make no difference whether a man is stupid or clever, bad or good.”
“Yes, I understand. They will all have the same spleen.”
“Exactly, madam.”
Madame Odintsov turned to Arkady.
“And what is your opinion, Arkady Nikolayevich?”
“I agree with Evgeny,” he answered.
Katya looked at him from under her eyelids.
“You amaze me, gentlemen,” commented Madame Odintsov, “but we will talk about this again.
I hear my aunt now coming in to tea — we must spare her.”
Anna Sergeyevna’s aunt, Princess X., a small shriveled woman with a pinched-up face like a fist, with staring bad-tempered eyes under her grey brows, came in, and scarcely bowing to the guests, sank into a broad velvet-covered armchair, in which no one except herself was privileged to sit.
Katya put a stool under her feet; the old lady did not thank her or even look at her, only her hands shook under the yellow shawl which almost covered her decrepit body.
The princess liked yellow, even her cap had yellow ribbons.
“How did you sleep, auntie?” asked Madame Odintsov, raising her voice.
“That dog here again,” mumbled the old lady in reply, and noticing that Fifi was making two hesitating steps in her direction, she hissed loudly.
Katya called Fifi and opened the door for her.
Fifi rushed out gaily, imagining she was going to be taken for a walk, but when she found herself left alone outside the door she began to scratch and whine.
The princess frowned. Katya rose to go out . . .
“I expect tea is ready,” said Madame Odintsov. “Come, gentlemen; auntie, will you go in to tea?”
The princess rose from her chair without speaking and led the way out of the drawing room.
They all followed her into the dining room.
A little Cossack page drew back noisily from the table a chair covered with cushions, also dedicated to the princess, who sank into it. Katya, who poured out tea, handed her first a cup decorated with a coat of arms.
The old lady helped herself to honey, which she put in her cup (she considered it both sinful and extravagant to drink tea with sugar in it, although she never spent a penny of her own on anything), and suddenly asked in a hoarse voice,
“And what does Prince Ivan write?”
No one made any reply.
Bazarov and Arkady soon observed that the family paid no attention to her although they treated her respectfully.
“They put up with her because of her princely family,” thought Bazarov. After tea Anna Sergeyevna suggested that they should go out for a walk, but it began to rain a little, and the whole party, except the princess, returned to the drawing room.
The neighbor arrived, the devoted cardplayer; his name was Porfiri Platonich, a plump greyish little man with short spindly legs, very polite and jocular.
Anna Sergeyevna, who still talked principally to Bazarov, asked him whether he would like to play an old-fashioned game of preference with them.
Bazarov accepted, saying that he certainly needed to prepare himself in advance for the duties in store for him as a country doctor.
“You must be careful,” remarked Anna Sergeyevna; “Porfiri Platonich and I will defeat you.
And you, Katya,” she added, “play something to Arkady Nikolaich; he’s fond of music, and we shall enjoy listening too.”
Katya went unwillingly to the piano, and Arkady, although he was genuinely fond of music, unwillingly followed her; it seemed to him that Madame Odintsov was getting rid of him, and he felt already like most young men of his age, a vague and oppressive excitement, like a foretaste of love.
Katya lifted the lid of the piano, and without looking at Arkady, asked in an undertone