Strange sounds of a string instrument were calmly floating to meet him; they seemed to burst into quiet, cheerless laughter, complaining of something, tenderly stirring the heart, as though imploring it for attention and having no hopes of getting it.

Foma did not like to hear music--it always filled him with sadness.

Even when the "machine" in the tavern played some sad tune, his heart filled with melancholy anguish, and he would either ask them to stop the "machine" or would go away some little distance feeling that he could not listen calmly to these tunes without words, but full of lamentation and tears.

And now he involuntarily stopped short at the door of the drawing-room.
A curtain of long strings of parti-coloured glass beads hung over the door.

The beads had been strung so as to form a fantastic figure of some kind of plants; the strings were quietly shaking and it seemed that pale shadows of flowers were soaring in the air.