He was arrested and condemned to a month in jail, which the daughter of the police-officer who had charge of him, contrived to convert into residence in their quarters, where Turgeneff wrote "Mumu"; and to residence on his estate, which he was not allowed to leave for about two years.

In 1855 he went abroad, and thereafter he spent most of his time in Paris, Baden-Baden (later in Bougival), returning from time to time to his Russian estate.
During this period his talent attained its zenith, and he wrote all the most noteworthy works which assured him fame: "Rudin," "Faust," "A Nest of Nobles," "On the Eve," and "First Love," which alone would have sufficed to immortalize him.

In 1860 he published an article entitled "Hamlet and Don Quixote," which throws a brilliant light upon the characters of all his types, and upon their inward springs of action.
And at last, in 1862, came his famous "Fathers and Children." The key to the comprehension of his works is contained in his "Hamlet and Don Quixote." His idea is that in these two types are incarnated all the fundamental, contrasting peculiarities of the human race--both poles of the axis upon which it revolves--and that all people belong, more or less, to one of these two types; that every one of us inclines to be either a Hamlet or a Don Quixote.

"It is true," he adds, "that in our day the Hamlets have become far more numerous than the Don Quixotes, but the Don Quixotes have not died out, nevertheless." Such is his hero "Rudin," that central type of the men of the '40's--a man whose whole vocation consists in the dissemination of enlightening ideas, but who, at the same time, exhibits the most complete incapacity in all his attempts to realize those ideas in practice, and scandalous pusillanimity when there is a question of any step which is, in the slightest degree, decisive--a man of the head alone, incapable of doing anything himself, because he has no nature, no blood.

Such, again, is Lavretzky ("A Nest of Nobles"), that concentrated type, not only of the man from the best class of the landed gentry, but in general, of the educated Slavonic man--a man who is sympathetic in the highest degree, full of tenderness, of gentle humanity and kindliness, but who, at the same time, does not contribute to life the smallest active principle, who passively yields to circumstances, like a chip borne on the stormy torrent.