MARIE ANTOINETTE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 260, 2 November 1935, Page 19

MARIE ANTOINETTE.

HER LAST LETTER. . DISCOVERY IN HUNGARY. PRAGUE, September 28. The last letter written by Queen Marie Antoinette before she was executed on October 10, 1793, has just been accidentally discovered in the famous library of ,the Hungarian aristocrat, Count Heinrich Apponyi, near the Czech spa of Pistyan.

Written in the gloomy cell before her death, it was given by the Queen to the cell doorkeeper, Baul, with the request that it should be handed to her sister-in-law. . The letter, however, fell into the hands of the examining magistrates and was not delivered. Several years later the revolutionary, Courtois, simply took the letter from the Government archives and placed it in his own private collection of historical documents. Twenty-four years after the death of Marie Antoinette, when Louis XVIII. came to'the throne, Courtois offered the letter to the King for a high sum. The King bought it, butwas ;profoundly disappointed to find that Courtois had sold the original letter for a still higher sum abroad, while making a forgery for the King.