vapour of Russian political jargon; all the heated discussions on both
sides are smoke, purposeless, obscure, and transitory as a cloud. But
the smoke really rose from the flames of anger in his own heart,
fanned by a woman's breath, who delighted to see her mild giant for
once smite his enemies with all his force. If "Fathers and Children"
had been received in Russia with more intelligence or more sympathy,
it is certain that "Smoke" would never have appeared. This is the most
bitter and purely satirical of all the works of Turgenev; the
Slavophils, with their ignorance of the real culture of western
Europe, and their unwillingness to learn from good teachers, are hit
hard; but still harder hit are the Petersburg aristocrats, the "idle
rich" (legitimate conventional target for all novelists), who are here
represented as little better in intelligence than grinning apes, and
much worse in morals. No one ever seems to love his compatriots when
he observes them in foreign lands; if Americans complain that Henry
James has satirised them in his international novels, they ought to
read "Smoke," and see how Turgenev has treated his travelling
countrymen. They talk bad German, hum airs out of tune, insist on
speaking French instead of their own tongue, attract everybody's
attention at restaurants and railway-stations,--in short, behave
exactly as each American insists other Americans behave in Europe.

The book is filled with little portraits, made "peradventure with a
pen corroded." First comes the typical Russian gasbag, who talks and
then talks some more.

"He was no longer young, he had a flabby nose and soft cheeks, that
looked as if they had been boiled, dishevelled greasy locks, and a fat
squat person. Everlastingly short of cash, and everlastingly in
raptures over something, Rostislav Bambaev wandered, aimless but