"I was spell-bound, and could not tear myself away from the picture. There was something familiar in it, as if it were a greeting, a reminder from my youth. Suddenly the thing was clear to me. This man, whose characteristic features unmistakably showed him to be an old Jew looking up from his Talmud, and pondering its enigmatic wisdom, reminded me of my uncle Leopold Friedlaender. In a flash the whole scene came before me: how he pored over his Talmud when, led by my mother, I came before him with childlike awe; and how he looked up from his volume and regarded me so kindly, so meditatively, exactly like the man before me in the picture. And while I reeled off what I knew of Hebrew lore, he leaned his head upon his left hand, and his right was placed on his book; then he raised his hand and laid it in blessing upon my head, and the tender lips spoke the Hebrew words of the benediction. It seemed to me as if I heard again the soft, insistent voice; and as if the high-vaulted corridors of the Vatican were transformed into the low, simple room of the Jew's house at Rawitsch. I was as one in a dream. It made a strong impression upon me. Like one possessed I gazed at the picture, and I believe my lips mumbled half-aloud '_Yevorechecho Adonay ve-yishmerecho_.' Never since that day have the words left my memory. They remain like a faint echo in my soul. Suddenly I felt a hand upon my shoulder. 'A fine picture, is it not,' said Francis to me, 'this Hebrew of the sixteenth century? I believe he was a Portuguese Jew, who was exiled to some Italian Ghetto, to Trastevere or the Ghetto Vecchio of Venice. Somewhere or other the artist came upon this fine, characteristic head, whose portrait places him amongst the immortals, although his very name is uncertain. He belongs to the Florentine school, possibly a pupil of Del Sarto. The realistic expression of the hand suggests Master Andrea himself; or it may have been Pontormo, or Puligo; at all events, a masterly painter.' While my friend gave these explanations, I had time to recover myself, but it was with difficulty that I threw off the spell of my imagination. So it was a Portuguese Rabbi of the sixteenth century, not my uncle Leopold! And yet he.... I knew it positively. Perhaps there was a talisman bequeathed from one to the other that made these Talmudic scholars of all times so much alike; or was it the Law, to which they devoted themselves with like zeal? Or the similarity of their attitude toward life? Or the tradition that remained unaltered through the centuries? When we left the Vatican soon after I could not dismiss the thought that my uncle Leopold Friedlaender had a place among the portraits of the Vatican Gallery.