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The year was 1791, and although Marie Antoinette did not win the favor of the French public, she did have a pen pal. His confidant, Axel von Fersen, was a Swedish earl and a close friend of the French queen.
Between the summers of 1791 and 1792, after an unsuccessful escape attempt, the queen nevertheless managed to secretly send letters to the Count of Fersen, although she was kept under close surveillance. He copied letters currently held in the French national archives. But between the time the letters were written and the time they arrived in the archives, a mysterious actor censored the letters, drawing words and lines with tightly looped circles of ink.
The content of the censored lines—and the identity of the scrupulous scribbler—has eluded historians for nearly 150 years. In an article published Friday in the magazine Science AdvancesIn , scholars have now uncovered the redacted contents of eight of the censored letters between Marie Antoinette and the Count of Fersen. The researchers used a technique called X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, which can detect the chemical signatures of different inks without damaging documents.
The uncensored content of the letters demonstrates Marie Antoinette’s deep love for her close friend during a time of turmoil. But as a blow to the gossip, the contents do not make it clear whether they are having an affair.
Emeline Pouyet, a researcher at the Sorbonne University in France who was not involved in the project, described the removed redaction as a “true technical breakthrough” contributing to the field of conservation science.
“I think it’s absolutely wonderful,” said Catriona Seth, a professor of French literature at Oxford University who was not involved in the research. “Science teaches us things we cannot predict.”
Marie Antoinette, who was executed in 1793, wrote many letters throughout her life.
While the content of the Queen’s later correspondence with the Count is often political, the letters capture some of the most extreme moments of her life. Dr. “He is under house arrest, he fears for his life, he may die,” Seth said. “She writes with this awareness of her destiny.”
However, Dr. Seth said only a few letters corrected the content. And many historians have wondered if these censored lines could bring new perspective to the French queen’s relationship with the Swedish count.
The letters remained in the family of the Count of Fersen until 1877, when they were published by the Count’s great-nephew Klinckowström Baron. Many historians suspect that the baron censored the letters, perhaps to protect his family’s reputation amid rumors that the Swedish count and the French queen were secret lovers.
In 2014, the National Archives contacted Anne Michelin, an assistant professor at the French National Museum of Natural History, to see if she could uncover the text.
Researchers can use X-ray tomography or CT scans to recover some hidden text, such as the inky interiors of rolled papyrus. These x-rays can visualize text without damaging the writing.
But the redactions in Marie Antoinette letters are a different kind of beast. The censor drew the lines using the same ink as the original writing, creating a superimposed black ink mess. The two inks did not have sufficient chemical contrast for the CT scans to detect the underlying text. Researchers brainstormed potential techniques that could break censorship; All but one failed to illuminate the redactions.
The prevailing method was X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, or XRF, which distinguishes the chemical signature of the ink used by the original author and the ink used by the censor. Initial XRF scans revealed that both texts were etched with metal gall ink, a common ink made with ferrous sulfate. Dr. “But ferrous sulfate is often not pure,” Michelin said. “It contains other metallic elements such as copper and zinc. With this small difference, we can distinguish the inks.”
In some letters, copper was only present in the original ink, so isolating the element on its own would eliminate censorship. Dr. “So I can only read the text with the copper map,” Michelin said.
Other letters were more deceptive. Without a single basic smoking gun, the researchers mapped the ratios of certain elements, such as copper-iron, to distinguish inks and reveal text. More letters still escaped being deciphered, as the original and redaction inks had an indistinguishably similar composition.
Ink scans may also have revealed the redactor’s true identity: not his grandson Klinckowström, but the Earl of Fersen himself. Scans showed that the census began using the same ink for writing and proofreading after 1791. In one letter, the count redacted a line and added text on top of it with the same ink and replaced the letter “letter” to make the line still readable. The 28 made me happy” less than “The letter of the 28 reached me.” A handwriting expert confirmed that the fine-tuning came from the earl.
The team ultimately deciphered eight of the 15 total letters, revealing emotional displays of affection between the French queen and the Swedish number: words like “dear, caring friend, adore and insane.”
Dr. “Very clearly, Marie Antoinette has a very deep affection for von Fersen, who was one of the cornerstones of her love at this stage of her existence,” Seth said.
However, Dr. Seth says the effusions hitting this moon are not evidence of a love affair. He compared them to the kissing face emoji.
“You can use this to say ‘goodbye’ to a friend, but someone unfamiliar with our emoji culture will assume you have to be deeply in love,” she said.
Besides, the earl was a busy man.
Dr. “He was still in a relationship with another woman at the time,” Seth added.
Before starting the project, Dr. Michelin was not familiar with the rumors between the Count of Fersen and Marie Antoinette. He is somewhat disinterested in the rumors, though he now has more affection for the ill-fated queen.
“All queens and all kings in France have had this love affair,” he said dryly on a Zoom call. “This is common.”
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