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All our astonishment vanishes, however, if we read the text of the bonds in the sense that what is represented in them as a demand made by the Devil is, on the contrary, a service performed by him - that is to say, it is a demand made by the painter. The incomprehensible pact would in that case have a straightforward meaning and could be paraphrased thus. The Devil undertakes to replace the painter’s lost father for nine years. At the end of that time the painter becomes the property, body and soul, of the Devil, as was the usual custom in such bargains. The train of thought which motivated the painter in making the pact seems to have been this: his father’s death had made him lose his spirits and his capacity to work; if he could only obtain a father-substitute he might hope to regain what he had lost.

A man who has fallen into a melancholia on account of his father’s death must really have been fond of him. But, if so, it is very strange that such a man should have hit upon the idea of taking the Devil as a substitute for the father whom he loved.