The pen wherein sat the richest man in the world was all of gold, but so small that Johannes could not possibly enter it. The richest man in the world had a large head, quite bare and bald, above a very small insignificant body. He moved slowly back and forth, like a caterpillar incasing himself; and out of his little lips there driveled golden threads with which he made a cocoon of himself.
"Poor fellow!" said Johannes, shuddering.
"Nonsense! Nonsense!" returned the Devil. "Here they are all happy. They know no better. I never torment as does the Other with his Love eternal. I have also here the classification 'War.' You would naturally think that these must be unhappy. But quite the contrary. In general, I am an enemy of war. I prefer peace, as you will presently see. But this is a pleasant 'War.' In fact, the people enjoy it. For that reason it belongs here."
And now they came to a long row of very small pens in which was just such a bustle as one hears at night in a chicken-coop when the fowls are going to sleep. Over each little pen was: "Religious War," "Party Strife," "Class Strife," and as Johannes looked in through a small window, he saw a solitary little fellow, much excited and red in the face, who stood skirmishing in front of a mirror. The reflection of his own figure was so queer that it looked like someone's else.
In the third pen Johannes saw Dr. Felbeck. With furious fists, the little fellow rushed up to the mirror again and again, and stamped and scolded and raved until the foam flew from his mouth.
Then they came to a very long and diminishing little room that bore the words Love and Peace.
"There!" said the Devil. "Now we can talk aloud. They are not easily wakened here. Snug and cozy, is it not? A section of it also is Pure Living, and Piety, and Benevolence."
In the little ward stood many tiny beds, as in a hospital; and Johannes saw Labbekak and Goedzak in slovenly felt slippers, shuffling back and forth, distributing cups of warm tea and spoonfuls of a syrupy mixture. The beings in the little beds licked off the spoons, and fell asleep again.
Outside, the demons yelled and screeched still louder, and the downward motion was so apparent that Johannes grew dizzy.
"Here, also," said the Devil, "Death does me much harm."