His Majesty writes to me:  “Count Benedetti spoke to me on the promenade, in order to demand from me, finally in a very importunate manner, that I should authorise him to telegraph at once that I bound myself for all future time never again to give my consent if the Hohenzollerns should renew their candidature.  I refused at last somewhat sternly, as it is neither right nor possible to undertake engagements of this kind a tout jamais.  Naturally I told him that I had as yet received no news, and as he was earlier informed about Paris and Madrid than myself, he could see clearly that my Government once more had no hand in the matter.”  His Majesty has since received a letter from the Prince.  His Majesty having told Count Benedetti that he was awaiting news from the Prince, has decided, with reference to the above demand, upon the representation of Count Eulenburg and myself, not to receive Count Benedetti again, but only to let him be informed through an aide-de-camp:  “That his Majesty had now received from the Prince confirmation of the news which Benedetti had already received from Paris, and had nothing further to say to the ambassador.”  His Majesty leaves it to your Excellency whether Benedetti’s fresh demand and its rejection should not be at once communicated both to our ambassadors and to the Press.

Bismarck cut this down to the following:—­

After the news of the renunciation of the hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern had been officially communicated to the Imperial Government of France by the Royal Government of Spain, the French ambassador at Ems further demanded of his Majesty, the King, that he would authorise him to telegraph to Paris that his Majesty, the King, bound himself for all future time never again to give his consent if the Hohenzollerns should renew their candidature.  His Majesty, the King, thereupon decided not to receive the French ambassador again, and sent to tell him through the aide-de-camp on duty that his Majesty had nothing further to communicate to the ambassador.

Efforts have been made to represent Bismarck’s “editing” of the Ems telegram as the decisive step leading to war; and in his closing years, when seized with the morbid desire of a partly discredited statesman to exaggerate his influence on events, he himself sought to perpetuate this version.  He claims that the telegram, as it came from Ems, described the incident there “as a fragment of a negotiation still pending, and to be continued at Berlin.”  This claim is quite untenable.  A careful perusal of the original despatch from Ems shows that the negotiation, far from being “still pending,” was clearly described as having been closed on that matter.  That Benedetti so regarded it is proved by his returning at once to Paris.  If it could have been “continued at Berlin,” he most certainly would have proceeded thither.  Finally, the words in the original as to the King refusing Benedetti “somewhat sternly”