"What high spirits!" Bazarov remarked as he retired from the window.
Later, when the noontide sun was glowing from behind a thin canopy of dense, pale vapour, and all was still save that the chirping of a few birds in the trees lulled the hearer to a curious, drowsy lethargy, and the incessant call of a young hawk on a topmost bough made the air ring with its strident note, Arkady and Bazarov made for themselves pillows of sweet, dry, fragrant, crackling hay, and stretched themselves in the shadow of a rick.
"Do you see that aspen tree?" remarked Bazarov. "I mean the one growing at the edge of a depression, where a brick kiln used to stand? Well, when I was a boy I used to believe that, together, the depression and the aspen tree constituted a special talisman, in that, when near them, I never found time hang heavy upon my hands. Of course, the explanation is that in those days I failed to understand that that immunity from ennui was due to the very fact of my being a boy. But, now that I am grown up, the talisman seems to have lost its power."
"How long were you here in those days?"
"Only two years. After that we moved elsewhere. In fact, we led a wandering life, and spent it mostly in towns."
"Is the house an old one?"
"It is. My maternal grandfather built it."
"Who was he?"
"The devil only knows! I think a major of some sort, a man who had served under Suvorov,[1] and could tell all manner of tales about crossing the Alps—though I daresay he told plenty of lies too."
"Ah! I noticed a portrait of Suvorov in the drawing-room. Cheerful-looking old houses like this I simply love. Somehow they seem to have a smell of their own."