Comment on 4.5.1829
The deleted text may be partly deciphered:
“after you / they had p[?]s[?][?][?] her[?].”
It is very difficult to decipher the text because Horneman (or another reader?) has tried to make it unreadable partly by crossing it out, and partly by adding extra letters between the words originally written by Horneman. The above attempt at interpretation has been done by identifying – and then ignoring – the strokes that are deletions and the letters that must be assumed to have been added later.
Maybe – maybe not – the de [you] in the deleted sentence refers to Thorvaldsen, as Horneman occasionally writes the polite form of address De [you] with a small d, see e.g. the line above. If that is the case, the deleted sentence might refer to some circumstance related to Thorvaldsen’s acquaintance with the said sister, who died in childbirth.
It may also be the personal pronoun in the third person plural de.
Last updated 24.09.2017