All Stepan Trofimovitch's condescending gibes at some of his opinions he accepted mildly, answered him sometimes very seriously, and often nonplussed him.

Stepan Trofimovitch treated him very kindly, and indeed he behaved like a father to all of us.

"You are all half-hearted chickens," he observed to Virginsky in joke.

"All who are like you, though in you, Virginsky, I have not observed that narrow-mindedness I found in Petersburg, _chez ces seminaristes_.

But you're a half-hatched chicken all the same.