French scientists decipher Marie Antoinette’s redacted love notes

WASHINGTON — “Not without you.” “My dear friend.” “You that I love.”

Marie Antoinette sent these expressions of affection in letters to her rumored lover Axel von Fersen. Someone later used dark ink to scribble over the words, apparently to dampen the amorous language.

Scientists in France devised a new method to uncover the original writing, separating out the chemical composition of different inks used on historical documents. They tested their method by analyzing the private letters between the French queen and the Swedish count, which are housed in the French national archives.

That allowed them to read the original words and even identify the person who scratched them out: von Fersen himself.

“It’s always exciting when you discover that you can know more about the past than you thought you could,” said historian Rebecca L. Spang, who studies the French Revolution at Indiana University and was not involved in the study.

The letters were exchanged between June 1791 and August 1792, a period when the French royal family was kept under close surveillance in Paris after having attempted to flee the country. Soon the French monarchy would be abolished; the next year, both Marie Antoinette and her husband, Louis XVI, would be beheaded.

“In this time, people used a lot of flowery language — but here, it’s really strong, really intimate language. We know with this text, there is love relationship,” said Anne Michelin, a material analyst at the Sorbonne’s Research Center for Conservation and co-author of the research published Friday in the journal Science Advances.