It was upon a hill high above Jerusalem.  There stood but one tree, bent and twisted by the wind, which had torn it on all sides, half withered.  One of its broken, crooked branches stretched out towards Jerusalem, as though in blessing or in threat, and this one Judas had chosen on which to hang a noose.

But the walk to the tree was long and tedious, and Judas Iscariot was very weary.  The small, sharp stones, scattered under his feet, seemed continually to drag him backwards, and the hill was high, stern, and malign, exposed to the wind.  Judas was obliged to sit down several times to rest, and panted heavily, while behind him, through the clefts of the rock, the mountain breathed cold upon his back.

“Thou too art against me, accursed one!” said Judas contemptuously, as he breathed with difficulty, and swayed his heavy head, in which all the thoughts were now petrifying.

Then he raised it suddenly, and opening wide his now fixed eyes, angrily muttered: 

“No, they were too bad for Judas.  Thou hearest Jesus?  Wilt Thou trust me now?  I am coming to Thee.  Meet me kindly, I am weary—­very weary.  Then Thou and I, embracing like brothers, shall return to earth.  Shall we not?”

Again he swayed his petrifying head, and again he opened his eyes, mumbling: 

“But maybe Thou wilt be angry with Judas when he arrives?  And Thou wilt not trust him?  And wilt send him to hell?  Well!  What then!  I will go to hell.  And in Thy hell fire I will weld iron, and weld iron, and demolish Thy heaven.  Dost approve?  Then Thou wilt believe in me.  Then Thou wilt come back with me to earth, wilt Thou not, Jesus?”

Eventually Judas reached the summit and the crooked tree, and there the wind began to torment him.  And when Judas rebuked it, it began to blow soft and low, and took leave and flew away.

“Right!  But as for them, they are curs!” said Judas, making a slip-knot.  And since the rope might fail him and break, he hung it over a precipice, so that if it broke, he would be sure to meet his death upon the stones.  And before he shoved himself off the brink with his foot, and hanged himself, Judas Iscariot once more anxiously prepared Jesus for his coming: 

“Yes, meet me kindly, Jesus.  I am very weary.”

He leapt.  The rope strained, but held.  His neck stretched, but his hands and feet were crossed, and hung down as though damp.

He died.  Thus, in the course of two days, one after another, Jesus of Nazareth and Judas Iscariot, the Traitor, left the world.

All the night through, like some monstrous fruit, Judas swayed over Jerusalem, and the wind kept turning his face now to the city, and now to the desert—­as though it wished to exhibit Judas to both city and desert.  But in whichever direction his face, distorted by death, was turned, his red eyes suffused with blood, and now as like one another as two brothers, incessantly looked towards the sky.  In the morning some sharp-sighted person perceived Judas hanging above the city, and cried out in horror.