![]() ![]() Their confinement followed a disastrous failed attempt to escape Paris orchestrated in large part by Fersen. Michelin’s study, published today in Science Advances, also demonstrates a methodology that may recover countless historical correspondences, official papers and drawings-and it might even help to analyze fossils.Ī side-by-side comparison shows an original letter with redactions (left) and the same letter examined using a combination of X-ray fluorescence imaging and data processing (right).Ĭentre de Recherche sur la Conservation, French National Museum of Natural Historyīetween June 1791 and August 1792 the French royal family lived under a form of house arrest at the Tuileries Palace in Paris while Fersen was abroad. The mystery censor appears to have been Fersen himself. ![]() In doing so they believe they’ve also revealed who wielded the heavy-handed pen. Anne Michelin, a physical chemist at the French National Museum of Natural History and colleagues have used old fashioned hard work and new techniques that plumb the varied composition of different inks to uncover many redacted parts of this famed correspondence. Modern technology has foiled some of the censor’s efforts. By blacking over words and entire lines with dark ink someone meant to hide them forever from history and they succeeded for two centuries-until now. For one or both of these reasons the few surviving letters between them are sprinkled with passages, like the one above, that have been blotted out by some unknown censor. Both Marie Antoinette and Fersen were pulling political strings in the hopes of salvaging the Bourbon dynasty, or at least saving the royals' lives. The letters were exchanged while the royal family was being held under house arrest by the revolutionaries controlling France. So did political aspects of their correspondence. The pair’s relationship demanded discretion. Instead, her intimate friend and rumored lover Swedish count Axel von Fersen was the recipient. But that letter was not meant for her husband Louis XVI. “ I will finish not without telling you my dear and loving friend that I love you madly and that I can never be a moment without adoring you.”ĭuring the dangerous days of the French Revolution, in January 1792, Marie Antoinette, queen of France, closed a letter with these tender words. ![]()
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