Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it's just such trifles that always ruin everything...." He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty.

He had counted them once when he had been lost in dreams.

At the time he had put no faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their hideous but daring recklessness.

Now, a month later, he had begun to look upon them differently, and, in spite of the monologues in which he jeered at his own impotence and indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard this "hideous" dream as an exploit to be attempted, although he still did not realise this himself.

He was positively going now for a "rehearsal" of his project, and at every step his excitement grew more and more violent.
With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up to a huge house which on one side looked on to the canal, and on the other into the street.