“It is clear,” writes the English Ambassador, “that Count Bismarck and the Prussian Ministry regret the attitude which the King has shewn to Count Benedetti, and feel, in regard to public opinion, the necessity of guarding the honour of the nation.”

To the Crown Prince, who had come to Berlin, Bismarck was more open; he declared that war was necessary.

This very day there were taking place at Ems events which were to give him the opportunity for which he longed.  On Benedetti had fallen the task of presenting the new demands to the King; it was one of the most ungrateful of the many unpleasant duties which had been entrusted to him during the last few years.  In the early morning, he went out in the hope that he might see someone of the Court; he met the King, himself who was taking the waters.  The King at once beckoned to him, entered into conversation, and shewed him a copy of the Cologne Gazette containing the statement of the Prince’s withdrawal.  Benedetti then, as in duty bound, asked permission to inform his Government that the King would undertake that the candidature should not be resumed at any time.  The King, of course, refused, and, when Benedetti pressed the request, repeated the refusal with some emphasis, and then, beckoning to his adjutant, who had withdrawn a few paces, broke off the conversation.  When a few hours later the King received a letter from the Prince of Hohenzollern confirming the public statement, he sent a message to Benedetti by his aide-decamp, Count Radziwill, and added to it that there would now be nothing further to say, as the incident was closed.  Benedetti twice asked for another interview, but it was refused.

He had done his duty, he had made his request, as he expected, in vain, but between him and the King there had been no departure by word or gesture from the ordinary courtesy which we should expect from these two accomplished gentlemen.  All the proceedings indeed had been unusual, for it was not the habit of the King, as it was of Napoleon, to receive foreign envoys except on the advice of his Ministers, and the last conversation had taken place on the public promenade of the fashionable watering-place; but the exception had been explained and justified by the theory that the King’s interest in the affair was domestic and not political.  Both were anxious to avoid war, and the King to the last treated Benedetti with marked graciousness; he had while at Ems invited him to the royal table, and even now, the next morning before leaving Ems, granted him an audience, at the station to take leave.  Nevertheless, he had been seriously annoyed by this fresh demand; he was pained and surprised by the continuance of the French menaces; he could not but fear that there was a deliberate intention to force a quarrel on him.  He determined, therefore, to return to Berlin, and ordered Abeken, Secretary to the Foreign Office, who was with him, to telegraph to Bismarck an account of what had taken place, with a suggestion that the facts should be published.