In that year, a Greek boy in the island of Rhodes having suddenly disappeared, a woman affirmed that she had seen him, shortly before, in company with a Jew. It chanced to be near the time of the Passover, and, strange as it may seem, some of the European consuls, on no better evidence than this, raised the old slander that the boy had been murdered, in order that his blood might be used for ritual purposes. The Jew was arrested, and denied any knowledge of the boy. He was thereupon put to the torture, under which his reason gave way, and he uttered the names of several Jews, who were at once assumed to be his accomplices. They were seized, and in their turn put on the rack; the Jewish quarter was closed, and no food allowed to enter it; and it is even said that an attempt was made to convey a dead body into one of the houses, in order that it might be found there. The story spread in all directions, and popular risings and outrages on the Jews ensued. The affair at Damascus was even more serious. Father Tomaso, a monk, who for many years had practised medicine, suddenly disappeared. A report was spread that he had been last seen in the Jewish quarter, which was instantly invaded by a mob of Christians, who denounced the Jews as his murderers. Count Menton, the French Consul, actuated, it is believed, by political motives, took up the matter and insisted on the punishment of the offenders, as he chose to consider the Jews. He produced persons who swore that the monk had been seen to enter the shop of a Jewish barber, from which he had never issued forth again. The barber was seized and bastinadoed, until in his agony he accused several of the richest Jews in the city as having been concerned in the murder. They were subjected in their turn to tortures, under which two of them died, and several more confessed their complicity in the crime. A young Jew, who swore that he had seen Father Tomaso enter the house of a Turkish merchant, on the evening of his disappearance, was bastinadoed to death, in order to induce him to retract his statement. The French Consul now laid the confessions which had been extracted from the prisoners before the Turkish Pacha, and insisted on their being immediately put to death.