To honour the hundredth anniversary of Maartens' death De dwaas Gods was reprinted in 2015.

Elias lives in a house of his own at the outskirts of Koopstad, looked after by his old nurse, Johanna, and occupies himself by growing flowers and helping the needy.

While Hubert stays in China to look after the firm's interests there, Hendrik starts speculating with Elias's money at the instigation of his brother-in-law, Thomas Alers.

This leads to a quarrel between the twins in Elias's house that escalates into murder: Hubert kills Hendrik.

Marion Spielmann said the characters of Thomas Alers and the Lossells in God’s Fool ‘live for us in his pages with a vividness that makes it hard to believe that they have no counterparts except as types.’[11] In 1924 the book was still so well known that Dru Drury, president of the South African Medical Association, mentioned it in his address at the 19th South African Medical Congress: ‘You may hear an articulate infant mind speaking in (…) Elias Lossell.’[12] The book has been criticized too, especially the beginning and the end.

Gertrude Buck and Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris in their book A Course in Narrative Writing found fault with them and called this way of telling a story ‘gallery-play’.

[13] Edmund Gosse told Maartens in a letter dated 6 December 1892 that he did not like ‘the end of vol.