- After his sleepless night with Maria (wink, nudge) Harry snores the day away. In fact, he almost forgets about the ball that night, but remembers in the evening and gets his act together.
- Harry decides to go back to one of the bars he used to frequent before he met Hermine to wait for the party to start.
- It's still too early to go to the party, so he goes to see a movie while he waits until it's a good time for him to make his fashionably late entrance.
- The movie is about the Old Testament, with Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. (It might have been this one)
- After the movie he finally gets up the courage to head over to the costume ball. It's already a rip-roaring, epic fest when he gets there, and everyone's having a great time.
- He checks his coat and puts his ticket in his pocket, because he's got a feeling that he'll be heading out soon.
- The party is in a huge building and there is dancing with different types of music in every room.
- Harry sees Pablo playing in one room, and keeps wandering to look for Hermine and Maria.
- He's losing steam, and instead of joining the festivities decides to sit and drink wine like an old grouch. In fact, one girl calls him "Old Growler" because he won't dance with her.
- The Steppenwolf is out in full force in Harry's psyche, and he decides to just go home and feel sorry for himself. When he gets to the coatroom, though, he can't find his ticket.
- A little guy dressed as a devil gives him a ticket and says he can just use his, which doesn't really make sense, because there's no way Harry could fit into his coat, but he takes it anyway.
- The ticket isn't a number at all, though – it's a secret message. It says: "TONIGHT AT THE MAGIC THEATER/ FOR MADMEN ONLY/ PRICE OF ADMITTANCE YOUR MIND/ NOT FOR EVERYBODY/ HERMINE IS IN HELL."
- This really wakes Harry up and he decides to go looking for Hermine, who is in one of the basement rooms (not real hell, don't worry).
- Maria, dressed as a flamenco dancer, tries to get Harry to dance with her, but he just kisses her and continues on his hunt for Hermine.
- He can't find Hermine, but he does run into Herman, his boyhood friend, sitting at the bar downstairs.
- Gotcha! It's not Herman at all, but Hermine dressed as a boy. This means that Harry can't dance with her or kiss her (apparently it would be scandalous for people to think he was dancing with a real man, even though this is a wild party).
- They sit and drink champagne, and at one point Hermine/Herman takes a girl out to dance and they disappear. When Hermine comes back she tells Harry that she and the girl made love.
- Harry gets into the proper party mood and dances with lots of girls, including the one who called him "Old Growler" earlier.
- He finally figures out why people like parties so much (bet you didn't know that was a hard one to figure out).
- Pablo, playing in the band, is thrilled that his friend Harry is finally learning to be happy.
- Suddenly Harry sees a girl coming toward him dressed as a Pierrette, a sad clown and is gob smacked by her beauty.
- Everyone else looks a mess from their wild partying, but she looks fresh as a daisy.
- Harry goes over and kisses the new girl, and figures out it's Hermine in a new costume. They dance and dance until the sun comes up and they are the last diehards left in the party.
- Hermine asks if Harry's ready and oh, boy, is he.
- Suddenly Pablo shows up and invites Harry to some entertainment "for madmen only." Harry and Hermine follow him to a round room with a table and three chairs in it.
- Pablo explains that he has invited them to the entertainment Harry has been looking for all this time, and gives them something to drink and some funny cigarettes.
- Then, Pablo pulls a mirror out of his pocket and gives it to Harry. He looks into it and sees his own reflection, Harry Haller, and also the Steppenwolf.
- Pablo invites them to a peep show in his little theater, so they follow him into a U-shaped hallway, like a theater lobby, that has a lot of doors leading into the auditorium.
- Pablo tells him that what he's really looking for is to lose his personality, because it is a prison to him, locking him into his battle between Harry and the Steppenwolf. What he needs to do is look into the doors and see all the other options he has.
- Hermine heads off to the right, and Harry goes to the left.
- Pablo shows Harry the mirror one more time, and tells him to erase the reflection that only shows Harry and the wolf. As he looks at his reflection, he starts laughing. The glass turns gray and the reflection disappears.
- This is just what he was supposed to do: laugh. Pablo tells him that he will learn to laugh like the immortals, like Goethe.
- Now Harry looks into a gigantic mirror on the wall, and sees himself thousands of times over, at different ages.
- One of his reflections jumps out of the mirror into Pablo's arms and they go laughing away together.
- A teenaged version of Harry also jumps out, and Harry follows him down the curved hallway. The boy enters a doorway that says "ALL GIRLS ARE YOURS/ ONE QUARTER IN THE SLOT."
- Harry keeps walking and goes through a door that reads: "JOLLY HUNTING/ GREAT HUNT IN AUTOMOBILES."
- He enters a war zone where people are fighting against machines. One of his friends from school, Gustav, shows up, and starts shooting at the drivers of cars. They embed themselves next to a road and shoot the cars that come by.
- Harry shoots one chauffeur, and then Gustav shoots the next. This car turns over and explodes, so they have to get down and clear the road for more victims.
- Harry searches the pockets of one of their victims and finds a card that says "Tat Twam Asi" (What in the world? That's Sanskrit for "You are That" or "That you are" and comes from an important Hindu text. It means, roughly, that each individual is part of a great whole.)
- The pair keeps shooting cars, but one of them stops and a pretty girl gets out. One of the passengers, an old man, has also survived and is hiding behind the dead chauffeur.
- The man says that he is the attorney general and wants to know why they shot him.
- They say it's because they were speeding, even though it isn't true; in their eyes, all cars are going too fast.
- The attorney general says he wants to be destroyed along with his car. The girl, his stenographer, faints.
- Another car shows up and Gustav and Harry make the people in it get out.
- They make the men take the attorney general with them on to town.
- The stenographer, Dora, comes to, and they all three climb up a tree to hide.
- Harry and Gustav teach Dora how to load the guns and they keep shooting cars.
- They start to feel guilty for all of their killing, even though it is a war, and Dora asks if they can leave. She and Harry start to climb down, and he kisses her knee on the way. She laughs, and they fall from the tree into nothingness.