On New Year’s Eve in 1995, French president François Mitterrand dined upon the cruel apex of French cuisine—foie gras, three dozen oysters, and a capon. But a smaller bird, the ortolan bunting, was the pièce de résistance of the dying man’s last meal. The sparrow-sized Emberiza hortulana are known as the “soul of France” and are easy to recognize with their olive-grey heads and distinctive yellow eye-rings. Poachers use glue and nets to catch the tiny creatures as they rest in trees after an exhausting migratory flight over the Mediterranean. Sold to restaurants, the captives are blinded or immured, as darkness triggers instinctual gorging. After adding a few grams to their minute frames, they are taken, still alive, and plunged in brandy to drown, then marinate, before being plucked and roasted. Connoisseurs speak rapturously of juices bursting from ruptured organs, of how small bones lacerate the inside of one’s mouth heightening one’s sense of taste. Tradition demands draping one’s head with a napkin to shield this gastronomic atrocity from God’s eyes. Not sated by a single serving, Mitterrand ate two ortolan rôti at his morbid banquet.
There was a reason Southern businessmen and thinkers were inspired by ancient Egypt: To them, it served as proof that all great civilizations were hierarchal societies sustained by enslaved labor.