The Queen's indiscretion won the heart of the favourite, and he longed for her presence. Twice, once at Rueil and once at Fontainebleau, he displaced La Grande Mademoiselle and installed himself in her room at the Queen's house. The first time that Mazarin supplanted Mademoiselle, the haughty Princess swallowed the affront and found a lodging in the village, but the second time she lost her patience. "It is rumoured in Paris," wrote d'Ormesson, "that Mademoiselle spoke to the Queen boldly, because the Cardinal wished to take her room in order to be near her Majesty." (September, 1645.) Some historians have inferred that the Queen had been secretly married to her Minister. We have no proof of any such thing, unless we accept as proof the very ambiguous letter which the Cardinal wrote to the Queen when he was in exile. In that letter he spoke of people who tried to injure him in the Queen's mind. "They will gain nothing by it," wrote Mazarin; "_the heart of the Queen and the heart of Mazarin are joined_[119] by liens which cannot be broken either by time or by any effort,--as you yourself have agreed with me more than once." In the same letter he implores the Queen to pity him: "for I deserve pity! it is so strange for this child to be married, then, at the same time, separated from ... and always pursued by them to whom I am indebted for the obstacles to my marriage." (27th October, 1651.) These words are of obscure meaning, and they may as easily be interpreted figuratively as literally. They who believed that the Queen had married Mazarin secretly must have drawn their conclusions from the intimate fondness of her manner. Anne of Austria was infatuated, and her infatuation made it impossible for her to guard her conduct; her behaviour betrayed the irregularity of the situation, and it is probable that her friends were loth to believe that anything less than marriage could induce such familiarity. However that may have been, Mazarin's letters give no proof of marriage, nor has it ever been proved that he claimed that he had married the Queen. When judgment is rendered according to evidence deduced from personal manners, changes in time and in the differences of localities should be considered. Our consideration of the Queen's romance dates from the period of the legitimate, or illegitimate, honeymoon. (August, 1643, or within six weeks of that time.)