With a nod and a grimace he leaped round the dead face, and played the most horrible antics. He sat on the eyebrows and raised the eyelids by the long lashes. The eye, which Johannes had seen bright with gladness, stared dull and white in the pale light. 'Now onwards!' cried Pluizer. 'There is more yet to be seen.' The worm came creeping up from a corner of the mouth, and the dreadful march began once more. Not back again, but along new paths, no less long and gloomy. 'This is much older,' said the earthworm as he made his way through another black wall. 'This has been here a very long time.' It was less dreadful here than before. Johannes saw nothing but a confused mass, out of which brown bones projected. Hundreds of insects were silently busy here. The light startled and alarmed them. 'Where do you come from? Who brings a light here? We want no light.' And they hastily vanished into the folds and crevices. But they recognised a fellow-creature. 'Have you been in the next one?' asked the worms. 'The wood is still hard.' The first worm denied it. 'He wants to keep the find to himself,' said Pluizer to Johannes in a low voice. Then they went forward again; Pluizer explained everything, and pointed out persons whom Johannes had known. They came to an ugly face with prominent, staring eyes, and thick dark lips and cheeks. 'This was a very fine gentleman,' said he in high glee. 'You should have seen him--so rich, so fashionable, so arrogant. He is as much puffed up as ever!' And so they went on. There were lean and haggard faces with white hair that shone blue in the feeble light, and little children with large heads and old-looking, anxious features. 'These, you see, died first and grew old afterwards,' said Pluizer. They came to a man with a flowing beard and parted lips, showing glistening white teeth. There was a round black hole in the middle of his forehead. 'This one lent Death a helping hand. Why had he not a little patience? He would have come here in the end.' Through passage after passage, one after another, they passed, no end of them--straight-laid figures, with rigid, grinning faces, and motionless hands laid one over the other. 'Now I can go no further,' said the ear-wig. 'I do not know my way beyond this.' 'Let us turn back,' said the worm. 'One more, one more!' cried Pluizer. So on they went. 'Everything you see here, actually exists,' said Pluizer, as they made their way forward. 'It is all real. One thing only is not real, and that is yourself, Johannes. You are not here; you cannot come here.' And he laughed maliciously as he saw Johannes's terrified and bewildered face at these words. 'This is the last, positively the last.' 'The way stops here. I am going no further,' said the ear-wig crossly. 'I will go further,' said Pluizer; and where the path ended he began grubbing the earth with both hands. 'Help me, Johannes.'