"Do you dislike the conversation? Then let us philosophise no more, but 'permit nature to waft upon us the silence of sleep,' to quote Pushkin."
"Pushkin never said any such thing," objected Arkady.
"Then, if he did not, he ought, being a poet, to have done so. Perhaps he had served in the army?"
"Never did he serve in the army."
"Indeed? Why, in his every line we come across 'To battle, to battle, for the honour of Russia!'"
"That is a mere invention on your part. The statement is an absolute calumny."
"A calumny? What matters a calumny? What is there in the term to be afraid of? Slander a man as much as you like, yet for himself he will hear things twenty times worse."
"Suppose we sleep," said Arkady irritably.
"With pleasure," Bazarov replied.
Nevertheless neither succeeded in the effort, for almost every sleep-destroying sentiment happened to be in the ascendant. So, after five minutes of such ineffectual striving, both opened their eyes, and lay mutely gazing about then.