Nothing, like something, happens anywhere. Philip Larkin

On July 14, 1789, King Louis XVI wrote a single word in his diary: Rien. Nothing. He meant that the hunt that day had been fruitless—despite having combed the forest with his retinue and his hounds. He had shot neither pheasant nor hare. A cause for melancholy at Versailles.

At the very same time, Paris was seething: crowds were besieging the Bastille, proclaiming the revolution, wearing cockades of blue and red, the colors of liberty and equality—soon they would add white, that of fraternity, and fashion the flag of a new age.

Nothing, rien, for someone who lived in a non-place.