M. Alphonse Ratisbonne belonged to a Jewish family of Strasburg, distinguished in the world as much for its social position as the universal esteem in which it was held; he himself was a member of a society for the encouragement of labor, contributing thus to the benefit of his unfortunate brethren. Towards the end of the year 1841, he became affianced to a young Jewess, who united in her person all those qualities calculated to assure his happiness. Before entering upon this new state of life, he decided to take a pleasure trip to the East, visiting on the way some of the most remarkable cities of Italy. There was nothing, he thought, interesting to him in the Eternal City, so from Naples he would direct his course to Palermo; but Divine mercy called him, though he did not recognize the voice; he is constrained, as it were, by a secret design of Heaven, to change his determination, and visit Rome. It was in this centre of Catholic unity that the God of all patience and goodness awaited him, it was here that grace was to touch his heart. But what were his dispositions? Thou, O Lord, knowest them!... His hatred of Catholicity was very far from suggesting a thought of his ever embracing it. He felt for our holy and sublime religion that violent animosity which could not contain itself, which chafed at anything reminding him of Christianity, and which had even grown more rancorous since his brother M. Theodore Ratisbonne's abjuration of Judaism and reception of Holy Orders. He could not pardon this desertion, and his implacable hatred increased with time. But the innocent object of his aversion never ceased to supplicate Heaven to shed a ray of divine light upon the deluded brother, who loaded him with indignation and contempt. Made sub-Director of the Archconfraternity of Notre Dame des Victoires, he often implored the associates' prayers for this brother's conversion. Such were M. Ratisbonne's sentiments when he entered Rome. He had scarcely arrived ere he thought of leaving; everything he saw in the Holy City urged him to hasten from it, everything excited him to declaim against what shocked and vilified his belief.... He was not proof, however, against a species of emotion in visiting the church of Ara Coeli; but it was an emotion which lost all its influence, (if influence it could be said to have exerted upon this heart buried in the shades of death,) when he understood that it was the general effect produced by the first sight of this remarkable monument. So, far from giving way to it, he hastened, on the contrary, to affirm that it was not a Catholic emotion, but an impression purely religious. In traversing the Ghetto, his hatred against Christianity was still more inflamed at witnessing the misery and degradation of the Jews; as if the chastisement of that deicidal people had been inflicted by the children of the Church, as if this people had not called down upon itself the vengeance of innocent blood!