Menus-Plaisirs du Roi
The Menus-Plaisirs du Roi (French pronunciation: [məny pleziʁ dy ʁwa]) 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.
At the king's lever, the premier gentilhomme de la chambre (First Gentleman of the Bedchamber), controller of the Menus-Plaisirs, was invariably in attendance, to hear directly from the king what plans were to be set in motion; by long-standing convention, he was a duke; though he was not a professional, it was up to him to determine the appropriate designs. The duke in charge of the Menus et Plaisirs du Roy was an important court official, quite separate from the Surintendant des Bâtiments du Roi, who was an architect or aristocrat in charge of all building operations undertaken by the Crown. The dukes in charge might leave the design process entirely to the professional intendant in charge, whose right-hand man was the dessinateur du cabinet et de la chambre du Roy; so did two dukes with military careers, Louis-François-Armand du Plessis, duc de Richelieu (1696-1788), appointed premier gentilhomme in 1744 and Emmanuel-Félicité, duc de Durfort-Duras (1715–89), made premier gentilhomme (and pair de France) in 1757. But Louis-Marie-Augustin, duc d'Aumont (1709–82), appointed premier gentilhomme de la chambre in 1723, a position he held until the king's death in 1774, was a noted connoisseur of objets d'art and the arts of life, though not, apparently, of paintings. The duc d'Aumont appointed the renowned gilt-bronze maker Pierre Gouthière doreur ordinaire of the Menus-Plaisirs in 1767 and appointed the architect Bellanger to the Menus-Plaisirs in the same year. For most of the reign of Louis XVI, the intendant of the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi was Papillon de la Ferté, whose journal (published in 1887) throws a great deal of light on the organization of court ceremony.
...
Wikipedia