- After the war and dismissed from service, impoverished soldier Christoffel is lost when the devil appears to offer him a deal: unlimited amounts of money, if he does not wash, cut his hair and nails and does not sleep in a bed for seven years. Christoffel accepts. But soon he realizes that the money does not help because people avoid the dirty, smelly fellow. He chooses accommodation in a prison, ransoms an indebted goldsmith, thus winning the heart of his daughter Katarina. But Christoffel leaves her. Only after those seven years, he has the devil purge him, returning to Katarina as a dapper man.