The Pale Opium Ghost and the Father of the Nation
A height only up to an adult man's waist, hair white as ash, pupils like a single drop of ink fallen just above her eyes. It was Emily Esther Petit.
She didn't know the taste of bread. Before she could savor bread, she had already tasted opium first. Her oldest memory was from when she was five years old. It was the time her mother fed her a spoonful of opium for a cold. By then, she was already so addicted that she couldn't even distinguish the taste of the opium itself.
Emily Esther Petit. Height 98 cm, average of seven breaths per minute, a white-haired woman with blue eyes and snow-white skin. Addicted to opium in childhood, she never grew past 100 cm; steeped in the drug, her breathing slowed. Her pupils contracted, her irises perpetually dilated as if staring into the sun, leaving her half-blind. Her blood vessels constricted, granting her that ghostly pallor. Convinced opium was the root of all evil, she endured withdrawal through sheer will, the stress turning her hair stark white.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I was just wondering what this country would have become without His Majesty."
"Hard to imagine."
At Louis XVI's command, she accompanied the National Intelligence Agency to dismantle the shadow industries.
"His Majesty's policies seem to see several moves ahead. Who knew the ossuaries would double as orphanages and block off the back alleys like corks in a bottle."
"Most of it was serendipity."
"But without proper preparation, even luck would have slipped through the cracks."
The National Intelligence Agency and Emily wandered the back alleys of Paris.
"Where is this place? Paris had somewhere like this?"
"Yes. Isn't this Les Innocents Cemetery?"
"Heavens, that corpse pit has changed like this?"
Emily marveled at Les Innocents, now emptied of all its bones.
"I never knew there were frescoes like this here."
The cloisters of Les Innocents, stripped of corpses and bones, bore frescoes of the Dance of Death painted three hundred years prior.
"Remember the Paris uprising last time, when they fired cannons? The bone towers collapsed then, so we relocated everything to the ossuaries during cleanup."
"You built enough ossuaries to move all of it?"
"Yes. It was something we had to do eventually. Now there are more souls in the ossuaries than buried in the ground."
With all bones and bodies gone, Les Innocents carried only the faint scent of lye. That morning's funeral-goers had placed fresh porcelain urns on wooden shelves in nearby ossuaries around Paris.
"I wonder if they really need someone like me."
"Who knows. But it's His Majesty's order, so something will come of it eventually."
May 1788. Hailstorms battered the whole of France. Anomalous weather from the Grimsbyton region engulfed central and northern France. Hailstones ten centimeters across devoured not just crops, but people too.
Impose curfew north of the Cévennes Mountains. Rations will be delivered every Monday. Men to their workplaces, women and children to their homes.
From this moment, any death by hail outside shall be deemed suicide.
It was a draconian curfew policy, yet no real backlash arose.
*Thud thud*
"Mommy, quart bottles are falling from the sky."
"Sweetie, those are hailstones. They'll hurt if they hit you, so you can't go out, okay?"
Hail from four centimeters minimum to twelve maximum was threatening enough for anyone to see.
"This week's rations have arrived."
"Pardon? Rations?"
In truth, the royal edict hardly mattered.
"You didn't see the criers or the posters?"
"In this weather? You'd crack your skull going to check posters."
Most civilians had barricaded themselves indoors the moment the hail started, so they obeyed the curfew without needing the iron fist.
"Well, rations are welcome. Our stockpiles were down to just potatoes, which was rough. What's in them?"
"No locusts, so relax. Just plain wheat flour, rye, and potatoes."
Regardless, low-level officials braved the hail to distribute food.
"Wear a leather umbrella if you go out. But with sudden drops, we don't have enough. Thirty-six men in this village, so we'll leave twenty at the village hall."
Ration officials in carts roofed with planks, wielding leather umbrellas, planted the seed of "public authority" in the minds of the French people.
"Social contract theory? I've been reading that book lately. Feels just like this."
"Subversive stuff? Not my jurisdiction, but don't let the police catch you."
"In this weather, if they come to arrest me, I'll go quietly."
"Fair point."
Until now, the state's necessity was proclaimed by the state itself—divine right of kings and such. But from this famine rationing crisis onward, the French people began to perceive the state's presence for themselves.
"But where did all this come from? Papers say everything's wiped out north of southern France."
"They've been stockpiling steadily for eight years against this. Strategic grain reserves. You didn't know?"
"Oh right, that policy. Thought it was just to guarantee farmers' profits, but it's useful like this too. Taxes feel worth every sou now."
About 200,000 intellectuals who passed civic exams might have been the majority, but the key was that this was a necessity they conceived, not one imposed by the state.
"Sigh... What is a nation, anyway?"
Since the fall of West Rome, European states had vied to claim kingship as Rome's true heirs—even after East Rome fell, insisting they were the real Romans. Russia, Ottomans, Austria: that was the state of 18th-century nations.
But France was different. France ignored the glamorous ancient Rome. Even after Austria's fall, when Pius VI offered the imperial throne, France consistently refused. Among young intellectuals, France was something—what, exactly?
They hadn't defined it precisely until now. The curfew and rations revealed it.
"Father."
National wealth. Not a god-given ruler, but a father to the people. Stern with wrongdoing, aiding in hardship, shielding from external threats, teaching right from wrong clearly. A father-state painting the grand picture for the French people.
That was Louis XVI in the eyes of his subjects.
The hail over France tensed all Europe. German Customs Union states, fearing French "impulses," queried Prussia.
"Huh? France? Oh, don't worry. Uncle said Louis the map-freak hates border changes."
Friedrich Wilhelm II brushed off the German Customs Union envoys amid his hangover.
They naturally didn't buy it. No guarantee the France that shattered the Holy Roman Empire-British anti-coalition in a hundred days wouldn't plunder just because of map aesthetics.
"Trust that fat slob and we'll be Prussia's meat shields. We save ourselves."
Convinced of French invasion, the German Customs Union states forged their own system—nullifying Frederick the Great's late-life collective defense framework.
"Ugh... Better as evening comes. Time to start the banquet."
But Friedrich Wilhelm II couldn't care less.
"Your Majesty, the German Customs Union is slowly slipping from Prussia's grasp."
"Customs Union? Just economic, right? Uh, yeah. Respect sovereignty. Sovereignty."
With so much legacy from Frederick the Great, he felt no need to act.
"Eh, this'll do. Anyway, banquet. Banquet."
Friedrich Wilhelm II handled reports in a morning haze of hangover, then reveled in luxury from sober lunch onward.
"Frederick the Great left Prussia the potential territory of the German Customs Union, vast Polish frontier, 280 million francs in treasury, and Europe's second-largest army after France. But the heir was Friedrich Wilhelm II."
Johan Christoph von Wöllner, financial advisor and old foe of Frederick the Great, lamented the sight.
Nothing changed.
"A million francs? Pocket change for art. Hey, give that man a million-franc grant."
Friedrich Wilhelm II neglected state affairs, squandering money like water.
"Your Majesty, I must remonstrate. Reconsider. Is that painting truly valuable? A pigeon could do better!"
"Tch. Can't you sense the mysterious German vibe? That's why finance drones are hopeless. No soul."
He even sponsored "Germanic" art—mediocrities, not universal French style.
"Your Majesty, contact lost with the million-franc recipient."
Most were con artists, naturally.
"Dare deceive innocent me! Where's the army? Arrest them, make examples!"
Thus, this Prussia reaped ancestors' achievements in lazy prosperity. Frederick the Great's grand German dream receded another step today.