On the following day the affiancing, of which this entertainment had been the prelude, took place with great solemnity. The most costly presents were exchanged, not only by the betrothed children, but also by their royal and noble relatives. This ceremony, owing to the failing health of the Duke, was also performed at the Hôtel Montpensier, and was succeeded by amusements of every description; among which those prepared for the occasion at the Arsenal by Sully afforded the most marked gratification to their Majesties. The minister had caused a spacious theatre to be constructed, in which the Italian actors who had been summoned to France by the Queen gave their representations. This pit or _salle de spectacle_ was, as he himself informs us, arranged amphitheatrically, while above were galleries divided into separate boxes, each approached by a different staircase and entered by a different door. Two of these galleries were reserved entirely for the ladies who were admitted to the performance, and no man, upon any pretext whatever, was permitted to enter them; an arrangement which appears to be strikingly at variance with the lax morality of the time. So resolved, nevertheless, was Sully to enforce this restriction, that he adds with a gravity curious enough upon such a subject: "This was one of my regulations which I would not suffer to be violated, and of which I did not consider it beneath me personally to compel the observance." [377] To impress, moreover, upon his readers the strength of this determination, he relates an anecdote of which we cannot resist the transcription: