This entire stretch of country was amazing; it was characterized by a
grandeur that was almost religious, and yet it had an air of sinister
desolation.
A great, wild lake, filled with stagnant, black water, in which
thousands of reeds were waving to and fro, lay in the midst of a vast
circle of naked hills, where nothing grew but broom, or here and there
an oak curiously twisted by the wind.
Just one house stood on the banks of that dark lake, a small, low house
inhabited by Uncle Joseph, an old boatman, who lived on what he could
make by his fishing. Once a week he carried the fish he caught into the
surrounding villages, returning with the few provisions that he needed
for his sustenance.
I went to see this old hermit, who offered to take me with him to his
nets, and I accepted.
His boat was old, worm-eaten and clumsy, and the skinny old man rowed
with a gentle and monotonous stroke that was soothing to the soul,
already oppressed by the sadness of the land round about.
It seemed to me as if I were transported to olden times, in the midst of
that ancient country, in that primitive boat, which was propelled by a
man of another age.
He took up his nets and threw the fish into the bottom of the boat, as
the fishermen of the Bible might have done. Then he took me down to the
end of the lake, where I suddenly perceived a ruin on the other side of
the bank a dilapidated hut, with an enormous red cross on the wall that
looked as if it might have been traced with blood, as it gleamed in the
last rays of the setting sun.
“What is that?” I asked.
“That is where Judas died,” the man replied, crossing himself.