'A foreign word again!' broke in Bazarov. He was beginning to feel vicious, and his face assumed a peculiar coarse coppery hue. 'In the first place, we advocate nothing; that's not our way.'
'What do you do, then?'
'I'll tell you what we do. Not long ago we used to say that our officials took bribes, that we had no roads, no commerce, no real justice ...'
'Oh, I see, you are reformers—that's what that's called, I fancy. I too should agree to many of your reforms, but ...'
'Then we suspected that talk, perpetual talk, and nothing but talk, about our social diseases, was not worth while, that it all led to nothing but superficiality and pedantry; we saw that our leading men, so-called advanced people and reformers, are no good; that we busy ourselves over foolery, talk rubbish about art, unconscious creativeness, parliamentarism, trial by jury, and the deuce knows what all; while, all the while, it's a question of getting bread to eat, while we're stifling under the grossest superstition, while all our enterprises come to grief, simply because there aren't honest men enough to carry them on, while the very emancipation our Government's busy upon will hardly come to any good, because peasants are glad to rob even themselves to get drunk at the gin-shop.'
'Yes,' interposed Pavel Petrovitch, 'yes; you were convinced of all this, and decided not to undertake anything seriously, yourselves.'
'We decided not to undertake anything,' repeated Bazarov grimly. He suddenly felt vexed with himself for having, without reason, been so expansive before this gentleman.
'But to confine yourselves to abuse?'
'To confine ourselves to abuse.'
'And that is called nihilism?'