At night in the then largest city in the world – and a witness as the revolution breaks out. A standard work of Paris literature, urban life, and revolutionary reporting. For twenty years, the "nightly observer" Rétif de la Bretonne spent his time exploring the then largest city in the world: Paris, after sunset. In a setting reminiscent of One Thousand and One Nights, he presents the most peculiar of his experiences and encounters to the readers. Grave robbers, book smuggling in vegetable gardens, the beleaguered woman, the wheeled man, the diligent idler, the poster tearer, the secret of the laundresses, the useful spy, the time-waster, the first balloons, tumult and uproar: even a small selection from the table of contents hints at the treasure trove of stories and observations that have come together here. In December 1788, the first twelve volumes of this monumental work are published, with two more following in April 1789. By then, Rétif already senses that new material is beginning to accumulate in the metropolis, explosive material for world history. He is present at the outbreak of the revolution. A group of revolutionaries approaches him from the Bastille, carrying the impaled heads of the last governor of the prison and the recently serving mayor of Paris. In the following years, he repeatedly witnesses murder and destruction, phases of ecstatic joy, atrocities, massacres, executions – and continues his book.