April 22, 1919

When I returned ten days ago from my foray into Southeastern Europe, under the auspices of General Smuts, one of my first inquiries was of Ben Israel. The bo’sun said he had not been around for some time; that when last he called, he had a hacking cough, “and I gave him some lozenges.” I felt I ought to look him up. In fact, only my sudden departure for Vienna had prevented me from making the call upon which he seemed to set great store and which indeed I had promised to make at the first opportunity. Although the decision had been reached (of that he was confident), Ben Israel wished to show me certain documents in Hebrew which would remove any doubt as to the validity of the Zionist claim to the Holy, the much promised, City. I now looked up his address and started to make good on my promise—and more, to refresh my soul with contact with the only man I had met in Paris who believed that his problem had been solved.

I came at last after many wanderings to the large tenement in a dark narrow canyon street which ran out from the rue Pigalle. It was indeed a human hive as I stood at the entrance, wondering where I should begin my inquiries; men black and white and yellow emerged from the dingy portal. I could not locate the loge for a time, but finally a little child with one shoe on and one shoe off kindly led me to it by a back stair. The door on which we knocked was evidently barricaded against complaining tenants, but when I mentioned Ben Israel, the stern face of the guardian of the gate relaxed. Here was a tenant who had left a pleasant farewell. “He is gone, the poor gentleman,” explained Madame la Concierge with a sigh. “He died two weeks ago.

“I had not seen him for days,” she went on, “and unlike so many others he had always been punctual with his rent. I banged on his door, and when there came no answer, I called in the passing sergot and he broke in. We found the kind old man, who never made a complaint about anything, lying on the floor with his head pillowed on a pile of manuscripts. I thought he was asleep, but when the police doctor came, he pronounced him dead; said indeed he had been dead for several days.

“Another Jew tenant told us what to do and in a few hours a number of his co-religionists appeared, in long black gabardine coats just like the one he always wore and had died in, and they prepared him for burial. I must tell you the Alliance, I think they called it, gave the old man a very chic funeral the very next day. They carried him down from his dark room with a black-bearded cantor leading the way with a voice that shook the building—but pretty it was not. When they brought him out on the street, I followed, of course, to show my respect to a good tenant who always paid his rent while there was life in his body, and I could not believe my eyes. There, awaiting the poor man who had never ridden even in a sapin in his lifetime, was un magnifique corbillard, a splendid hearse, all covered with a cloth encrusted with silver and gold.

“But one thing they had cheapened on,” now admitted the concierge, although she evidently hated to point out the sun spots in this picture of unexpected splendor, “and that was his coffin. In fact, it wasn’t a real coffin at all; they had bundled him into four rough planks, unpainted, unplaned, and knotted, held together not by nails but by rough wooden skillets.”

When I explained that this was the proper ritual according to the law and the prophets, the concierge was greatly relieved. “They were good people,” she admitted, “those black-bearded men of the Alliance. They paid me the rent for four more weeks—the time they thought it would take them to assort those parchment papers he studied day and night by candlelight, for his was a windowless room—all he said he could pay for. And that was chic, don’t you think so?” I agreed.

I did not grieve unduly for Ben Israel, although I shall miss him.