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.

It happened that Bismarck, when the telegram arrived, was dining with
Roon and Moltke, who had both been summoned to Berlin. The three men
were gloomy and depressed; they felt that their country had been
humiliated, and they saw no prospect of revenge. This feeling was
increased when Bismarck read aloud the telegram to his two colleagues.
These repeated and impatient demands, this intrusion on the King's
privacy, this ungenerous playing with his kindly and pacific
disposition, stirred their deepest indignation; to them it seemed that
Benedetti had been treated with a consideration he did not deserve; the
man who came with these proposals should have been repulsed with more
marked indignation. But in the suggestion that the facts should be
published, Bismarck saw the opportunity he had wished. He went into the
next room and drafted a statement; he kept to the very words of the
original telegram, but he left out much, and arranged it so that it
should convey to the reader the impression, not of what had really
occurred, but of what he would have wished should happen. With this he
returned, and as he read it to them, Roon and Moltke brightened; here at
last was an answer to the French insults; before, it sounded like a
"Chamade" (a retreat), now it is a "Fanfare," said Moltke. "That is
better," said Roon. Bismarck asked a few questions about the army. Roon
assured him that all was prepared; Moltke, that, though no one could
ever foretell with certainty the result of a great war, he looked to it
with confidence; they all knew that with the publication of this
statement the last prospect of peace would be gone. It was published
late that night in a special edition of the _North German Gazette_, and
at the same time a copy was sent from the Foreign Office to all German
embassies and lega