This is the first of a series of seventeen illustrations supplied by Delacroix for a French translation by Albert Stapfer of Part 1 of Goethe's Faust, published in Paris in 1828. In this scene from the Prologue in Heaven, Mephistopheles, flying above the nocturnal city skyline, comments of his recent interview with the Lord, "I like to see the Old Man now and then, / And take good care to keep on speaking terms."

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