#quiz answer

And now, without further ado... The answer is…

🥁Drum roll🥁

Answer C : Louis XVI

Yes, the contemporaries of Louis XVI, even those who supported him, did not hesitate to describe their king in unflattering terms. This is particularly true of Madame de La Tour du Pin. Madame de La Tour du Pin—Henriette-Lucy Dillon, Marquise de La Tour du Pin and Countess of Gouvernet—saw the king with her own eyes and recorded her testimony in the memoirs from which the quiz excerpt is drawn, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans.[1]

The countess was present at Versailles during the opening of the Estates General of 1789. On Tuesday, 5 May 1789, in the great hall of the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs at Versailles, Madame de La Tour du Pin watched the king ascend to his throne, “set upon a dais covered in purple velvet strewn with golden fleurs-de-lis, backed by a paneled backdrop and surmounted by a canopy of the same fabric.”[2] The royal elevation created a striking contrast with the dark mass of deputies from the Third Estate.

Hardly had the king arrived when the entire assembly of Third Estate deputies rose to greet him with applause. It was the first time many of them had ever seen their sovereign. Were they surprised by his appearance? For it is at this moment that the countess reports, in her memoirs, the manner “in which he waddled,” his lack of “dignity in his bearing,” his “abrupt and awkward movements,” and his “extremely poor eyesight […] which made him grimace.”[1]

The awkwardness of the scene was heightened by an unexpected gesture just before he began his speech: for reasons unknown, the king rose and clumsily replaced his hat. The queen, Marie-Antoinette, naturally rose as well. This added further embarrassment, as the king motioned for her to sit, which she refused with a formal curtsy.

Despite these awkward preliminaries, the delivery of the speech proceeded smoothly. According to the American statesman Gouverneur Morris, who was also present, the address was repeatedly interrupted by “warm and infectious applause.”[3] This eyewitness testimony illustrates an important point about Louis XVI’s public image at the dawn of the Revolution: even in highly ceremonial settings intended to project royal authority, his natural awkwardness, poor eyesight, and lack of physical poise undermined the impression of majesty that the court hoped to convey. For many contemporary observers, including those not hostile to the monarchy, these physical traits became symbolic of a broader perception of a monarch ill at ease with the role he was expected to embody—an image that would profoundly influence how his reign and downfall were later remembered.

Footnotes

[1] Madame de La Tour du Pin, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans, p. 180.

[2] Alexandre Maral, Les derniers jours de Versailles, p. 95. [3] Gouverneur Morris, Journal de Gouverneur Morris, ministre plénipotentiaire des États-Unis en France, p. 27.

Q.1. c. Mexico

Q.2. b. 20

Q.3. b. 2.4 seconds.

Q.4. c. Medium-hard-hard.

Q.5. b. 8.771 seconds.

Q.6. c.38.

Q.7. a.35.

Q.8. c.26

Q.9. c.3.

Btw I don't think I've ever mentioned it but I'm a huge Lego fan (well, the collection belongs to my nephew now, but still) so I love what you're doing! ❤️

You are so right @annabtg , and I am glad to hear you are also a Lego fan (me too 🤫🫣)

I definitely had “the broom 🧹 stories” by @mppmaraudergirl in mind with this post.

The tags are just so people scrolling through my blog can go to whatever specific tag quicker, ignore this if you just found it while scrolling through the actual tag— (Realised that this only works on mobile/ipad I think)

Never expect this blog to be full of stuff for one Fandom, because I rarely post and because of that, there's never enough of one Fandom on this blog before I move on onto another Fandom (move on onto another Fandom as in 'making it the Fandom I'm obsessed with at the moment')

Fri/4/Feb/2022 - HI I CHANGED MY ACC NAME (It used to be multimoqa)

I'm actually not sure what to put here

- I don't exactly have an art style of my own right now, so basically I switch between different art styles a lot (•-•")

- Also I won't mind if you were to go ahead and like a bunch of my posts! So spam like all you want :]

Favourite Colour?

Lots of colours! Right now it's more like 'Pastel Salmon'

Around Mon 8th Of November 2021 - Nope, I think my favourite colour is yellow now

Edit again (But 2022): Nope, it's both

Are you ready to find out the answer of my last quiz?

Who wrote: "The Newtonians count seven; nonetheless, from the mixture of only three, painters create every shade. Could art then be simpler than nature? […] According to my experiments, it is certain that the primary colors are limited to yellow, red, and blue, because one always succeeds in extracting from the light that decomposes at the edges of bodies only these three distinct colors."

Ready? 🥁*Drum roll*🥁

No, it is not answer A, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. She was a brilliant painter, yes—but she did not write this. And honestly, can anyone imagine her running scientific experiments between two portrait sittings?

Now we are left with three serious contenders: B) Antoine Lavoisier? C) Jean-Paul Marat? D) Jacques-Louis David?

Things get interesting here. Both Lavoisier and Marat were scientists, and—just to complicate matters—they both explored theories of color. And then we have Jacques-Louis David, a renowned painter of the revolutionary era, famous not only for his paintings but also for his vision of art.

The answer is... 🥁Drum rolls🥁

Answer C. Jean-Paul Marat.

Jean-Paul Marat was far from the “ordinary” revolutionary of his time—the typical lawyer raised in a quiet bourgeois family. He wasn’t even French. Before becoming the thunderous revolutionary Ami du peuple, Marat was first and foremost a scientist. He trained as a physician, but medicine alone didn’t satisfy him. Soon, he turned to physics and even built his own laboratory. There, he carried out a series of experiments, including research on color theory.

Of course he did—how could he avoid such a subject? Color is essential to anyone interested in physics. That is why Antoine Lavoisier, an eminent scientist of his time (unlike Marat in the eyes of the scientific elites), also investigated the nature of color.

In his work “Notions élémentaires d’optique,” Marat described his experiments on color among many others. In fact, he openly challenged Newton’s theory of color and criticized his methods. Yet Newton was widely endorsed by the Royal Academy of Sciences and celebrated within French intellectual circles—thanks in no small part to Voltaire’s promotion of his work.

Abroad, however, criticism of Newton existed. The Swiss polymath Leonhard Euler, for example, argued against him. But in France, Newtonian devotion reigned. The abbé Pierre Bertholon even wrote a biting article attacking Marat’s audacity:

“Monsieur Marat uses faulty prisms and treats his flawed observations as proof against Newton.”

Yes—Jean-Paul Marat managed to ignite controversy right up to the very end.

Bertholon's article against Marat: Letter published in Charles Vellay "Marat et l'abbé Bertholon", RHRF, 1912/3, p 295.

And now, without further ado... The answer is…

🥁Drum roll🥁

Answer A: Philippe Lebas.

Philippe Lebas (1764–1794), often remembered as one of Robespierre’s most loyal allies, came from a modest bourgeois family background that would profoundly shape his path through the Revolution. Long before becoming a Montagnard deputy in 1793, Lebas was simply a young provincial trying to build a career in Paris.

This excerpt from his letter, reproduced in Autour de Robespierre : le conventionnel Lebas by Stéphane Pol¹, is one of the most revealing traces of his early years as a lawyer in Paris. He wrote it on 13 March 1790 to his father, shortly after renting a small two-room apartment on Rue Guénégaud—a narrow street in the literary and artisanal heart of the city. For 180 francs a year, the apartment was, as he described it, “very nice, very respectable,” though it remained unfurnished. He asked his father to send basic necessities—“two mattresses, blankets, three or four pairs of sheets”—because he could not yet afford to furnish it himself. It is a striking reminder that even future revolutionaries from bourgeois provincial families struggled with the cost of living in the capital.

Lebas saw Paris as a place where “a young man without fortune” might finally find opportunity and eventually support his parents. At the same time, he admitted that this choice “weighed on [his] heart,” since moving to Paris meant distancing himself from the family he depended on both emotionally and materially. The tenderness of the letter contrasts sharply with the hardened image he would acquire in Year II, especially during his missions with Saint-Just and his tragic end during the fall of Robespierre in July 1794.

This small room on Rue Guénégaud—furnished only with what his father could spare—reveals a side of Lebas that history often overlooks: a dutiful son, shaped as much by scarcity as by affection.

Footnotes