Also in _The Reconciliation of David and Absalom_ at the Hermitage, where behind the sham trappings of the figures shine the eternal motives of reconciliation and forgiveness.
When the child was much older he saw the _Christ at Emmaus_, and _The Good Samaritan_ in the little room at the Louvre, hanging side by side, and he never forget the hour that he spent with them.

He had seen, year by year, many of the world's pictures; but at the sight of these two works, his childish predilection for Rembrandt became a deep-rooted reverence and admiration, which was never to pass from him.
Here was Rembrandt the seer, the man who had suffered.

Saskia was dead, his popularity gone; but the effect of these things was but to fill his heart with a world sympathy, with pity for all who sorrow.

Again and again he treated the _Christ at Emmaus_, _The Good Samaritan_, and _The Prodigal Son_ themes.

"Some strange presentment of his own fate," says M.Michel, "seems to have haunted the artist, making him keenly susceptible to the story of _The Good Samaritan_.