"Early this morning I sent a note to Mr Odo Russell, requesting to have an interview with him. He replied by note that he would call on me at half-past ten, which he did. I showed him Baron Rothschild's telegram, enquiring as to the progress in the Mortara affair. He said, in reply to it, I might make any use of his name that I thought might be of service to my cause, as he felt most anxious to do all in his power to help me. I then mentioned the conversation I had had with Lord Stratford de Redcliffe yesterday, pointing out that it was his Lordship's impression that Cardinal Antonelli would have no objection to see me if I called on him. I therefore asked Mr Russell's opinion as to whether I should call on his Eminence, and if so, whether he would be so good as to introduce me to him. Mr Russell said Lord Stratford was intimate with the Cardinal, and it would perhaps be better if his Lordship would introduce me, but he thought perhaps I should wait for the answer of Monsignor Pacca before seeing the Cardinal. I then asked him if he thought I should leave my card. This he approved, and said he would see Monsignor Pacca, and find out how the matter stood, and would also converse with Lord Stratford concerning Cardinal Antonelli. He thought the Sovereign Pontiff would see me after the holidays.
"At four I rode, with my dear wife, to the Vatican, where his Holiness resides. On the floor above are the apartments of Cardinal Antonelli. I had to ascend 190 steps, a most splendid marble staircase. The steps were easy to ascend, being very broad and low. The person in waiting took my card, and enquired if I wished to see his Eminence. This, I said, I hoped to do some other day. I then drove to the Palazzo Colonna and left my card for the French Ambassador, to whom we are all so much indebted for his most zealous endeavours on behalf of young Mortara."
In the evening Signor Tagliacozzo came in to report on two other attempts made by some of the Roman populace to cause trouble to the Hebrew community. In two different Synagogues, he said, arrangements had been made to hide a child there, with a view of raising the alarm outside the moment the door should be closed, and then falling upon the Jews and accusing them of intended murder. "By the mercy of heaven," he said, "these plans were frustrated, and in each case the lost child was found."
"The director of the police," he continued, "sent to the President of the Deputies of the Jews at Rome, and informed him of the discovery of the missing children." Meanwhile many of the Jews had been afraid to pursue their daily avocations in the city, several having been ill-treated by the ignorant people, who pelted them with stones, injuring two or three very severely. Signor Tagliacozzo observed that the Jews had had a miraculous escape, for on the beadle closing the doors of one of the Synagogues on Friday evening last he observed a child under a seat in one of the corners, as if asleep. He turned the child out, but could get no satisfactory explanation as to how he came into the Synagogue, or why he remained after all the people had left.
About half-an-hour after the beadle had locked up the Synagogue, the people in the Jewish quarter were alarmed by the noise of a concourse of women and children, and some men, with officers of the police, saying that the Jews had concealed in the Synagogue or house adjoining a Christian child, to sacrifice it and use its blood in their Passover cakes. The woman whose child was supposed to be stolen shrieked dreadfully, and led the officers of the justice, in the first instance, to the house, and then to the Synagogue, to the very spot where the child had been found. Had the beadle not seen the child, as no doubt was the expectation of those who hatched the plot, the lives of hundreds of innocent persons would have been sacrificed. In another Synagogue a child endeavoured to enter on a Friday evening, when all the service was over and the doors were being locked, but was fortunately also discovered by the beadle, and driven away.
Rome is not the only place in these States where endeavours have been made to excite hatred against the Jews on the old base and wicked charge of eating human blood. At Sinigallia, near Ancona, a woman went to the police, saying she had escaped being murdered by the Jews, and the ignorant populace threatened the poor Jews with vengeance, and the place was in great agitation. All this is scarcely to be believed, but I have heard, though I can scarcely give credit to it, that this charge against the Jews is impressed upon the children at the several colleges. I myself believe that the colleges are free from this crime, and shall be glad to find that the common sense of the case is explained to the children.
The reader may well imagine how painfully these unfortunate occurrences must have affected the mind of both Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, and how disheartening it was to them to see the object of their mission becoming every day more hopeless. This, together with the very disquieting reports from England regarding the political state of Europe, and the feeble state of Lady Montefiore's health, made Sir Moses very anxious at receiving no reply from Monsignor Pacca. "I begin to think," he observed to his friends, "I shall get none."
Rome, April 27th.—Lady Montefiore was very unwell. Sir Moses continued in a state of great excitement. "I fear," he said, "there is little hope of an audience for me with the Sovereign Pontiff."
At about one o'clock Mr Odo Russell came. He drove Sir Moses to the Palazzo Colonna, the residence of the French Ambassador, the Duc de Grammont. The latter received them in a very friendly manner, and recounted to Sir Moses all he had done in the case of the boy Mortara, and said he was certain that all his efforts would be unavailing.
Rome, April 28th.—Mr Odo Russell accompanied Sir Moses on a visit to Cardinal Antonelli.
"His Eminence," Sir Moses writes in his Diary, "received us immediately. I told him the object of my coming to Rome, and of my disappointment at not being able to obtain an audience of the Pope to present to him the address of the Board of Deputies. Every endeavour I had made having failed, I had to request his Eminence to present it for me to the Sovereign Pontiff. I then gave him the address, and said, 'I would remain a week in Rome for an answer to it.' The Cardinal replied that 'it was impossible to do anything in the Mortara case, but that every precaution should be taken to prevent so unfortunate an occurrence for the future; that a child once baptised was a Christian, and as the Catholic Church considered that those of all others could not be saved, the child would not be given up until the age of seventeen or eighteen, when it would be free to follow its own inclinations. In the meantime the parents should have free access to the child, it should be well educated and taken care of, but the law of the Church prevented its being given back to the parents, He alluded to an order that Jews should not have Catholic servants, as any conscientious woman might, from pious motives, seeing a child dangerously ill and apprehending its death, baptise it, she at the time believing that it could not be otherwise saved in the event of its death.' I said, 'As we were all the children of one God, it was deeply to be lamented that we could not dwell together in peace.' He again alluded to the laws of the Church.