Oh, [he says, shaking his head: that isn't how he meant it, you see--] people's ideas of anything transcending their own reality will be full of inaccuracies - that is inescapable. I would take no human account on such things as fact.
[He's not expecting cruelty because of the human fairytales about the Devil, no. Rather...]
There is a cruelty to all beings standing above lesser creatures, no? Certainly it seems so from the perspective of those lesser creatures; mythologies from all over the world tell of gods, angels, demons and spirits that cruelly toy with human lives, unheeding of the value of what to them seem short, insignificant existences. Is that not so?
[Now, human lives are short and insignificant, of course, but that's beside the point.]
What I mean to say is, I would have expected him to be cruel, not because of what he has or has not done or because what truth there is to the stories about him, but because of what he is. Whether devil or angel, that which stands above humanity seldom has much kindness to spare for it.