"Soon I shall have to agree with my uncle in his opinion that you think but poorly of Russia."
"Rubbish! The Russian's very best point is that he holds a poor opinion of himself. Two and two make four. Nothing but that matters."
"And is nature also rubbish?" queried Arkady with a musing glance at the mottled fields where they lay basking in the soft, kindly rays of the morning sun.
"Nature is rubbish—at least in the sense in which you understand her. She is not a church, but a workshop wherein man is the labourer."
At this moment there came wafted to their ears the long-drawn strains of a violoncello, on which a sensitive, but inexperienced, hand was playing Schubert's Erwartung. Like honey did the voluptuous melody suffuse the air.
"Who is the musician?" asked Bazarov in astonishment.
"My father."
"What? Your father plays the 'cello?"
"He does."
"At his age?"