The Devil sent hordes of mortals to Rembrandt for portraits. He gave wealth to Rembrandt, 
he gave him a charming house in Amsterdam, a wife and later a mistress, because he was 
sure he would have Rembrandt's soul in the end.
  
  But Rembrandt had been changed by his encounter with the Devil. Having seen such 
undeniable evidence of evil, he found himself obsessed with the question What is good? He 
searched the faces of his subjects for their inner divinity; and to his amazement he was 
able to see the spark of it in the most unworthy of men.
  
  His skill was such-and please understand, he had got no skill from the Devil; the skill 
was his to begin with- that not only could he see that goodness, he could paint it; he 
could allow his knowledge of it, and his faith in it, to suffuse the whole.
  
  With each portrait he understood the grace and goodness of mankind ever more deeply. He 
understood the capacity for compassion and for wisdom which resides in every soul. His 
skill increased as he continued; the flash of the infinite became ever more subtle; the 
person himself ever more particular; and more grand and serene and magnificent each work.
  
  At last the faces Rembrandt painted were not flesh-and-blood faces at all. They were 
spiritual countenances, portraits of what lay within the body of the man or the woman; 
they were visions of what that person was at his or her finest hour, of what that person 
stood to become.
  
  This is why the merchants of the Drapers' Guild look like the oldest and wisest of 
God's saints.
  
  But nowhere is this spiritual depth and insight more clearly manifest than in 
Rembrandt's self-portraits. And surely you know that he left us one hundred and 
twenty-two of these.
  
  Why do you think he painted so many? They were his personal plea to God to note the 
progress of this man who, through his close observation of others like him, had been 
completely religiously transformed. "This is my vision," said Rembrandt to God.
  
  Towards the end of Rembrandt's life, the Devil grew suspicious. He did not want his 
minion to be creating such magnificent paintings, so full of warmth and kindness. He bad 
believed the Dutch to be a materialistic and therefore worldly people. And here in 
pictures full of rich clothing and expensive possessions, gleamed the undeniable evidence 
that human beings are wholly unlike any other animal in the cosmos-they are a precious 
mingling of the flesh and immortal fire.
  
  Well, Rembrandt suffered all the abuse heaped upon him by the Devil. He lost his fine 
house in the Jodenbree-straat. He lost his mistress, and finally even his son. Yet on and 
on he painted, without a trace of bitterness or perversity; on and on he infused his 
paintings with love.
  
  Finally he lay on his deathbed. The Devil pranced about, gleefully, ready to snatch 
Rembrandt's soul and pinch it between evil little fingers. But the angels and saints 
cried to God to intervene.
  
  "In all the world, who knows more about goodness?" they asked, pointing to the dying 
Rembrandt. "Who has shown more than this painter? We look to his portraits when we would 
know the divine in man."
  
  And so God broke the pact between Rembrandt and the Devil. He took to himself the soul 
of Rembrandt, and the Devil, so recently cheated of Faust for the very same reason, went 
mad with rage.
  
  Well, he would bury the life of Rembrandt in obscurity. He would see to it that all the 
man's personal possessions and records were swallowed by the great flow of time. And that 
is of course why we know almost nothing of Rembrandt's true life, or what sort of person 
he was.
  
  But the Devil could not control the fate of the paintings. Try as he might, he could 
not make people burn them, throw them away, or set them aside for the newer, more 
fashionable artists. In fact, a curious thing happened, seemingly without a marked 
beginning. Rembrandt became the most admired of all painters who had ever lived; 
Rembrandt became the greatest painter of all time.
  
  That is my theory of Rembrandt and those faces.
  
  Now if I were mortal, I would write a novel about Rembrandt, on this theme. But I am 
not mortal. I cannot save my soul through art or Good Works. I am a creature like the 
Devil, with one difference. I love the paintings of Rembrandt!
  
  Yet it breaks my heart to look at them. It broke my heart to see you there in the 
museum. And you are perfectly right that there are no vampires with faces like the saints 
of the Drapers' Guild.
  
  That's why I left you so rudely in the museum. It was not the Devil's Rage. It was 
merely sorrow.
  
  Again, I promise you that next time we meet, I shall let you say all that you want to 
say.
  
  I scribbled the number of my Paris agent on the bottom of this letter, along with the 
post address, as I had done in the past when writing to David though David had never 
replied.
  
  Then I went on a pilgrimage of sorts, revisiting the paintings of Rembrandt in the 
great collections of the world. I saw nothing in my travels to sway me in my belief in 
Rembrandt's goodness. The pilgrimage proved penitential, for I clung to my fiction about 
Rembrandt. But I resolved anew never to bother David again.
  
  Then I had the dream. Tyger, tyger . . . David in danger. I woke with a start in my 
chair in Louis's little shack-as if I'd been shaken by a warning hand.
  
  Night had almost ended in England. I had to hurry. But when I finally found David, he 
was in a quaint little tavern in a village in the Cotswolds which can only be reached by 
one narrow and treacherous road.