Her unselfishness had a great effect upon the old artist, whose admiration for his adopted daughter now knew no bounds. Through her he was restored to his faith in human nature, and he asked God to forgive him for ever doubting the existence of virtue.
We cannot follow Louise Gerretz through the next twenty years. Suffice it to say that during that time Van Zwanenburg passed peacefully away, and that Paul Rembrandt, whose reputation was now well established, had married. The lonely sister tried to get on with Paul's wife, but after a few years she had sadly to seek a home of her own.
At the end of the twenty years Louise one day received the following curt letter from her miserly brother:
"Sister,—My wife is dead, my son is travelling, I am alone.
"Paul Rembrandt."
The devoted sister, still intent on making others happy, started at once to her brother, and until the day of his death she never left him. A great change had come over Rembrandt. He had become more morose and bitter than ever. Success had only seemed to harden his heart, until nothing but the chinking of gold had any effect upon it. He was immensely wealthy, but a miser. As the years passed the gloom settled deeper upon his soul, until finally he shut himself up in his dark studio, and would see no one but Jews and money-brokers. At times he would not let a picture go unless it had been covered with gold, as the price of it. With all this wealth, the house of the famous painter bore a poverty-stricken look, which was copied in the person of Rembrandt himself.
Just before the end, when he felt himself seized by his death-sickness, Paul one day called his sister to his bedside, and, commanding her to raise a trapdoor in the floor of his bedroom, showed her his hoard of gold. He then begged, as his last request, that he should be buried privately, and that neither his son, nor indeed any one, should know that he died rich. Louise was to have everything, and the graceless son nothing.
Louise's Refusal
Great was his anger when his sister declared she should not keep the gold, but would take care that it passed into the hands of those who would know how to use it properly. Louise was firm, and Rembrandt was powerless to do more than toss about in his distress. But gradually, under the gentle admonitions of his sister, the artist's vision seemed to expand, and before his death he was enabled to see where and how he had made shipwreck of his happiness. Thanks to the ministrations of his sister, his end was a peaceful one, and he died blessing her for all her devotion to him.
Louise's own useful and devoted life was now near its close.