"You have changed a good deal of late?" hazarded Arkady.
"I daresay. But I shall be myself again, soon. The only thing now troubling me is the fact that my mother is so good-naturedly fussy. Should one's paunch not be projecting, or should one not eat at least ten meals a day, she relapses into despair. My father, of course, is different, for he has been all over the world, and knows what is what. This cigar is simply unsmokable." And Bazarov consigned it to the dust of the roadway.
"The distance to your place is twenty-five versts, I suppose?" queried Arkady.
"It is so. But inquire of that sage there." And Bazarov pointed to the peasant (an employé of Thedot's) who was seated on the box.
The "sage" in question replied that he "could not say exactly," since the verst-posts in those parts had not been measured out; after which he went on to swear at the shaft horse for "kicking" its "jowl about"—that is to say, jerking its head up and down.
"Aye, aye," commented Bazarov. "Take warning from me, my young friend. An instructive example sits before you—an example of the vanity of this world. By a single thread does the destiny of every man hang, and at any moment there may open before him an abyss into which he and his may plunge. For always he is laying up for himself misfortune."
"At what are you hinting?" asked Arkady.
"At nothing. I am merely saying outright that you and I have behaved very foolishly. However, why talk of it? I have noticed that in surgical operations it is the patient who fights against his hurt who soonest gets well."
"I do not understand you," Arkady said. "So far as I can see, you have nothing whatsoever to complain of."
"You cannot understand me? Well, mark this: that you had far better go and break stones by the roadside than allow a woman to obtain even the least hold over you. Such a thing is sheer" (he nearly said "Romanticism," but changed his mind) "rubbish."