Far
from the seat of government, beyond the Apennines, they are less poor,
less oppressed, and less despised. The Israelitish population of
Ancona is really a fine race.
It is not to be inferred from this that the agents of the Pope become
converts to tolerance by crossing the Apennines.
It is not a year since the Archbishop of Bologna confiscated the boy
Mortara for the good of the Convent of the Neophytes.
Only two years ago the Prefect of Ancona revived the old law, which
forbids Christians to converse publicly with Jews.
It is not ten years since a merchant of considerable fortune, named P.
Cadova, was deprived of his wife and children by means as remarkable
as those employed in the case of young Mortara, although the affair
created less sensation at the time.
M.P. Cadova lived at Cento, in the province of Ferrara. He had a
pretty wife, and two children. His wife was seduced by one of his
clerks, who was a Catholic. The intrigue being discovered, the clerk
was driven from the house. The faithless wife soon joined her lover at
Bologna, and took her children with her.
The Jew applied to the courts of law to assist him in taking the
children from the adulteress.
The answer he received to his application was, that his wife and
children had all three embraced Christianity, and had consequently
ceased to be his family.
The Courts further decreed that he should pay an annual income for
their support.
On this income the adulterous clerk also subsists.
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