“I am not melancholy. What have you brought, Malanya Finogenovna?” replied Nekhliudof, endeavoring to smile.
“Ain’t melancholy! can’t I see?” the old woman began to say with warmth. “The whole livelong day to be all sole alone! And you take everything to heart so, and look out for everything; and besides, you scarcely eat anything. What’s the reason of it? If you’d only go to the city, or visit your neighbors, as others do! You are young, and the idea of bothering over things so! Pardon me, little father, I will sit down,” pursued the old nurse, taking a seat near the door. “You see, we have got into such a habit that we lose fear. Is that the way gentlemen do? There’s no good in it. You are only ruining yourself, and the people are spoiled. That’s just like our people: they don’t understand it, that’s a fact. You had better go to your auntie. What she wrote was good sense,” said the old nurse, admonishing him.
Nekhliudof kept growing more and more dejected. His right hand, resting on his knee, lazily struck the piano, making a chord, a second, a third.
Nekhliudof moved nearer, drew his other hand from his pocket, and began to play. The chords which he made were sometimes not premeditated, were occasionally not even according to rule, often remarkable for absurdity, and showed that he was lacking in musical talent; but the exercise gave him a certain indefinable melancholy enjoyment.
At every modification in the harmony, he waited with muffled heartbeat for what would come out of it; and when anything came, he, in a dark sort of way, completed with his imagination what was missing.
It seemed to him that he heard a hundred melodies, and a chorus, and an orchestra simultaneously joining in with his harmony. But his chief pleasure was in the powerful activity of his imagination; confused and