We have not, moreover, far to seek for a reason for her explosion of temper in 1649 if she really believed her master meant to marry her, for on that very same October 1st, in reference to some otherwise unimportant disturbances of the neighbourhood by a drunken man, we find a certain Hendrickje Stoffels, of Ransdorp, in Westphalia, giving evidence on Rembrandt's behalf. Of the subsequent relations between her and Rembrandt there can be, unfortunately, no doubt whatever. She was at that time three-and-twenty, and a pleasant-looking girl enough, as her portrait, now in the Louvre, makes clear, and that her devotion to Rembrandt was not at all events self-seeking, the future made abundantly evident. As long as she lived, she remained attached to him, through evil fortune and ill-report, and, though there was too good reason for the step, she is generally believed to have never asked or expected him to "make an honest woman of her," as the phrase goes. To this belief, however, I hesitate to subscribe; indeed, I incline to the conviction that the description of her given in a lawsuit on October 27th, 1661, as his lawful wife, "huysfrouw," the very title he himself gave to Saskia, was strictly accurate. There is not, it must be admitted, another particle of direct evidence that it was so, though this in itself is not to be despised, but there are circumstances not a few that point in the same direction.
While the connection was irregular, and to begin with, at least, it undoubtedly was so, there was never any concealment or shamefacedness about the matter, nor do Rembrandt's friends, not even the respectable Burgomaster Six, seem to have looked askance upon it. It is true that in 1654 she was summoned, somewhat tardily, before the Consistory of her church, severely admonished, and forbidden to communicate. That, of course, was inevitable from their point of view, and only shows how absolutely open the arrangement was. How improbable it is then that in later years she should have deliberately perjured herself on the question when, if it were perjury, the evidence to convict her must have been overwhelming. There can, indeed, have been no doubt, long before this church summons, as to the relations between them, for in 1652 she gave birth to a child which did not, however, survive long, as we know that it was buried in the Zuiderkerk on August 15th.