Crossword-Solution: MENZEL 6 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 17

Somebody, especially in the Foreign Department; copying furtively, and imparting to Prussia, Despatches of the most secret, thrice-secret and thrice-dangerous nature, which lie reposited there! Who can have done it? Guesses, researcher, were many: at length suspicion fell on one Menzel, a KANZELLIST (Government Clerk), of good social repute, and superior official ability; who is not himself in the Foreign Department at all; but whose way of living, or the like sign, had perhaps seemed questionable.

Has received, one time and another, several 100 thalers from Benoit, since the Court came hither last."--(And so EXIT Menzel.) "Hereupon the Second Prisoner was brought in;--who deposed as follows:-- "He is named Johann Benjamin Erfurth; a goldsmith by trade; age thirty-two; the Prisoner Menzel's Brother-in-law.

Prisoner farther declares, that it was the Minister von Mahlzahn who, of his own accord, and quite at the beginning, made the proposal concerning the keys; and when Plessmann brought the keys, he said expressly they were for the Minister, along with fifty thalers, which he, Menzel, received at the same time.

Traitor Menzel the Saxon Kanzellist--we, who have prophetically read what he had to confess when laid hold of, are aware, though as yet, and on to 1757, it is a dead secret to all mortals but himself and "three others"--has been busy for Prussia ever since "the end of 1752." Got admittance to the Presses; sent his first Excerpt "about the time of Easter-Fair, 1753,"--time of Voltaire's taking wing.

Think what a study they were at Potsdam in 1753, while still in the chaotic state; fished out, more or less at random, as Menzel could lay hold of them, or be directed to them; the enigma clearing itself only by intense inspection, and capability of seeing in the dark! It appears,--if you are curious on the anecdotic part,-- "Winterfeld was the first that got eye on this dangerous Saxon Mystery; some Ex-Saxon, about to settle in Berlin, giving hint of it to Winterfeld; who needed only a hint.