"True," was Bazarov's careless reply. "In fact, the Germans are, in the same respect, our masters."
"You think highly of the Germans?" Paul Petrovitch's tone was now studiously polite, for he was beginning to feel irritated with the man—his aristocratic nature could not altogether stomach Bazarov's absolute lack of ceremony, the fact that this doctor's son not only knew no diffidence, but actually returned snappish and reluctant answers, and infused a brusquerie akin to rudeness into his tone.
"At least the savants of that part of the world have some energy in them," retorted Bazarov.
"Quite so. And your opinion of our Russian savants is—well, perhaps less flattering?"
"It is, with your leave."
"That constitutes a piece of laudable modesty on your part," Paul Petrovitch observed with a slight hitch of his figure and a toss of his head. "But how comes it about that Arkady has just told us that you recognise no authorities whatsoever? Do you not trust authorities?"
"Why should I? Is anything in the world trustworthy? Certainly, should I be told a fact, I agree with it, but that is all."
"Oh! Then the Germans confine themselves solely to facts?" Paul Petrovitch's face had now assumed an expression of detachment, as though he had suddenly become withdrawn to the ultimate heights of the empyrean.
"No, not all Germans," replied Bazarov with a passing yawn. Clearly he had no mind to continue the controversy. Meanwhile Paul Petrovitch glanced at Arkady as much as to say: "Admit that your friend has beautiful manners!"
"For my own part," he continued, ostentatiously, and with an effort, "I, a fallible mortal, do not favour the Germans. Of course, I am not including in that category the Russo-Germans, who, as we know, are birds of passage. Rather, it is the Germans of Germany proper whom I cannot abide. Once upon a time they used to produce men like Schiller and like—what's his name?—Goethe: for both of which authors my brother has a marked predilection. But now the German nation has become a nation solely of chemists and materialists."