_July 5th._--This afternoon Keudell brought down from the Chief an article which appeared in the _Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_ of the 2nd inst., which began with the words “Der Telegraph.” The Chief had written on the margin, “This article is contrary to the instructions given. The Minister of the Interior is to be written to respecting a warning to the editorial staff, or the withdrawal of all favours. Strict daily supervision necessary.” Keudell said the Chancellor was furious with Brass, and almost believed that he was paid by Napoleon to make mischief between ourselves and Versailles. He then begged me to write the necessary letter to the Minister of the Interior. The article of the 2nd of July was the last which I wrote for the Foreign Office from the direct personal instructions of the Chancellor. From that time forward the direct intercourse with the Chancellor, which I had hitherto enjoyed, was transferred to the new “Press Councillor,” Aegidi, who had been here for some weeks, but had not been received by the Prince until eight or ten days after his arrival, and who, even then, was not employed immediately. I did not know at the time what was the reason of the change, and Bucher also was unable to explain it. He was afterwards of opinion that Aegidi was introduced by Keudell, who intended to leave the Foreign Office and take an appointment abroad, in order that he might be kept informed of what was going on here. It would be his business also to see that the press men should not cease to accord him that recognition which he, as Personal Councillor, Treasurer and Administrator of Pensions, was accustomed to receive from time to time, but that it should, on the contrary, continue to flow in a stronger and deeper stream. I cannot say whether the former surmise was correct. I will show later on, when I come to deal with Herr von Keudell himself, that the other point did not remain any mere suspicion. For the present I will only remark that the censer, which used to be swung before the latter in the press, was much more frequently in use after the arrival of his _protégé_ in Berlin, and that the smoke of the incense recalled in a very suspicious way Aegidi’s own style. (...) James Ludwig Carl Aegidi, a Protestant, son of a doctor in Freienwalde, was born in 1825. He studied law at Königsberg, Heidelberg and Berlin, and was married to a Fräulein von Senden, a cousin of Keudell’s.... A few days after Aegidi’s arrival Keudell, speaking of him to me, credited him with “exceptional scientific knowledge, relations with almost all literary circles, and the tact which was desirable for mediating between the Chief and the daily press.”