There is no such thing as a perfect vacuum in history. That unheard-of absence to which we are reduced, and which I have the pleasure and the misfortune to reveal to you, you would be mistaken to imagine merely a blank, uninscribed; for in it I discern – presentiment or hallucination? – a kind of expectation of other gods. Which ones? No one can say. All I know, and it is what everyone knows, is that a situation like ours cannot be endured indefinitely.