Menus-Plaisirs du Roi
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The Menus-Plaisirs du Roi was, in the organisation of the French royal household under the Ancien Régime, the department of the Maison du Roi responsible for the "lesser pleasures of the King", which meant in practice that it was in charge of all the preparations for ceremonies, events and festivities, down to the last detail of design and order.
The meeting of the Estates General, in the Salle des États, 5 May 1789
Image: Plan of the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs (Rue Bergère) Gourret 1985 p 84
Image: Long section of the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs (Rue Bergère) Gourret 1985 p 83
Levee (ceremony)
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The levee was traditionally a daily moment of intimacy and accessibility to a monarch or leader, as he got up in the morning. It started out as a royal custom, but in British America it came to refer to a reception by the sovereign's representative, which continues to be a tradition in Canada with the New Year's levee; in the United States a similar gathering was held by several presidents.
Charles Wild (1816) St James's Palace, Queen's Levee Room
The second scene of William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress (1732-33) showing the wealthy Tom at his morning levée in London, attended by musicians and other hangers-on all dressed in expensive costumes. Surrounding Tom from left to right: a music master at a harpsichord, who was supposed to represent George Frideric Handel; a fencing master; a quarterstaff instructor; a dancing master with a violin; a landscape gardener Charles Bridgeman; an ex-soldier offering to be a bodyguard; a bugler of a
Le Lever, engraving by Louis Romanet (1742–1810), after Sigmund Freudenberg (1745-1801)