The Last Meal of Francois Mitterand
Warning: This post contains an image that some may find distressing.
This afternoon to Pere Lachaise, the famous cemetery set on a hill in the east of Paris, for a walk among the crocuses and the early spring sunshine. Among the many famous graves to be found there are the resting places of Oscar Wilde and Pissarro, Édith Piaf and Molière; and of Heloise and Abelard, the medieval lovers, who were divided in life but thanks to some 19th romantics are now united in death.
Walking among the graves of many of France’s great and good, I was reminded of a story I once heard about the death of Francois Mitterand. Aged 79, the great European Statesman, who had been President of the Republic for more than ten years in the 80s and 90s (the longest time of any president), became stricken with an aggressive prostate cancer, he was told he had only months to live. Fearing death and in constant pain, he requested a last meal; a last bombastic comfort and a chance to revisit the great life that was lived, and the luxury that he had enjoyed with it. It was a glutinous, orgiastic affair, featuring the richest produce that French cuisine has to offer: foie gras, rich cheeses, fine wines etc. But it was the last course that secured the meal’s place in French national myth and legend: ortolans.
The Ortolan bunting is a small songbird that spends its summer feeding in the rich fertile plains of Europe before returning south for the winter. Traditionally in France, these birds were netted as they headed for the coast, then caged under dark cloth to simulate night and cause the birds to gorge themselves on grain until they had doubled in size—legend has it that, in more ancient times, emperors had their eyes put out, thus condemning the tiny birds to endless night and endless feeding—once fattened, they are drowned in a bath of Armagnac (a distinctive kind of brandy distilled in Gascony, southwest France), then plucked and roasted whole (viscera and all). The bird, roasted for just 8 minutes in a hot oven, is then consumed in one go if the eater can manage it (the beak is usually discarded). This practice became officially outlawed in France in 1999, but the delicacy continues to be consumed via black market sellers.
It was this illegal, cruel delicacy that completed the last meal of Francois Mitterand. According to traditional practice, he covered his head with white cloth for shame, to shield his greed from the sight of God. What a remarkable, haunting image... As it turned out it really was the last meal that he ever ate, he started refusing food and died a fews days later.
Dinner: Bouillabaisse, with fillets of sole, crusty French bread and eye-watering aioli.