"The Prosecutor has said, in speaking of the work, that it moved the

entire population, and that there must be a cause for this. He has

reason to say so. I agree with him; there must be a cause, far deeper

than any that has been mentioned here to-day. It is at this cause that

we strike--which exists in the heart of man.

"As to our aim, we are trying to bring these people who outrage your

laws, who fight against God, to the feet of Him who alone can change

them, to the only hope that exists for them, the Saviour of the world.

We work, we live, we suffer to do this. This is our one hope and

object--to bring the world to the great Deliverer, Jesus Christ.

"Ah! The question of all questions, the question which every

intelligent man ought to face, is--What are we to do with the masses? If

they are not reached by the power of the Gospel, a day will come when

they will turn round against you, occasioning terrible trouble and

disorder, and awful will be the consequences. Then, gentlemen, you will

have reason to regret your action in this matter. If these disturbers

are capable of manifesting such hatred, such rage against citizens who

pray to God, they will also be capable of manifesting the same

rebellious spirit against any other opinions, or any other law, which

may not please them.

"We have not made the people like this. Bear in mind that we have not

created this terrible state of barbarism, which was let loose around

that hall, and which has made my heart bleed many times in witnessing.

Who is responsible for this? We cannot be, for we have only been in

your town a few months.

"Although we have suffered terribly through misrepresentations that have

been wilfully circulated about us, we are not discouraged! We know that

truth and justice will soon triumph. I love Switzerland all the more for

what we have endured (_Applause_). A little while and Switzerland will

love us. We shall win thousands to righteousness, peace and heaven.

"The Prosecutor referred to the Queen saying that even she was subject

to the decrees of Parliament, but that I placed myself above her in

refusing to become subject to the decrees of the Grand Council. There

is no parallel between Her Majesty and myself. No act has been passed

to forbid her praying in a wood, or I think Her Majesty would have

something to say on that subject (_Sensation_).

"One word in conclusion. You may punish us; you may imprison us; you

may prosecute us as long as you are permitted; but what you cannot do is

to stop this work--to suppress it. Beware what you do for your country's

sake, for Jesus Christ's sake. Take care that in banishing us you do

not banish the light, that you do not banish Jesus Christ, and in that

great day when you are called to give an account you be found guilty of

fighting against God."

Such pleading was irresistible. The jury had not the courage to enforce

the law. To their honour, they let themselves be swayed by

considerations of equity. They found that while the accused had

violated the decree she had not acted with "culpable intention." In

consequence of this verdict she was acquitted. The sentence was

received by her friends in the court with a burst of fervent "Amens."

And the Marechale deserved the thanks of every Swiss patriot. By her

bold and successful claim of right she had made history. At a time when

the old Republic was forgetful of its noblest traditions, untrue to

itself, she restored its ideal. She vindicated for every man and woman

freedom to worship God according to their conscience. She brought back

to the hills and valleys of Switzerland the crown rights of the

Redeemer.

No one appreciates or speaks more enthusiastically to-day than the

Marechale of the devotion and bravery of her comrades, Colonel Clibborn

first and foremost, and spiritual children at this time.

*CHAPTER VI*

*THE SOUL OF FRANCE*

It is not easy to reach the ideal and spiritual elements of character

which are masked by the light laughter or the polite scorn of the

typical Frenchman, who believes, or pretends to believe, that religion

is only for priests and women. At the opening of a new hall in the Rue

Oberkamff, a big fellow shook his fist in the Marechale's face and said,

"An Englishman may accept religion--a German--or a heathen, but a

Frenchman--never!" "O God, if You exist, save my soul, if I have one!"

was the prayer of another man, who had attended the meetings for some

time, and who indicated with a strange pathos the bewildered state of

mind into which many of the educated, as well as the ignorant, had sunk.

"Let there be no mistake," said a French writer, Louise de Croisilles;

"it is by no means unnatural that the Army should have taken root in

India, or even under Africa's burning sun, but that it should be

accepted in Paris, the centre of free-thought and unbelief, that is a

thing incredible."

Nevertheless the Frenchman suffers from "the malady of the ideal," even

as other men. His heart is restless until it rests in God, and it is

sheer faithlessness to say that he cannot be won by the grace of God.

If he is sceptical, it is because he has no conception of the

fascinating loveliness of Christianity; if he is a scoffer, it is

because he has never come in contact with human lives which suggest to

him the infinite goodness of God.

After the Marechale's great legal victory, which was really a triumph of

the Gospel over its enemies, she returned to Paris and quietly resumed

her tasks. She was in nowise changed, though public opinion regarding

her was undoubtedly changed. She had become a person of note. Editors

of newspapers and magazines sent reporters to her meetings at the Quai

de Valmy, or at the new headquarters in the Rue Auber, and found piquant

accounts of her sayings and doings to be excellent copy. Visitors to the

city came to hear her. Artists begged for the honour of painting her

portrait for the Salon, an honour which she steadily refused. The son

of Garibaldi invited her to visit Italy, where, he said, she would be

welcomed and not treated as she had been in Switzerland. None of these

things, however, moved her. As she had promised God in her prison that

she would never be depressed by the calumnies of men, so now she prayed

that she might never be elated by their praises. With a stronger faith

and a more ardent hope, she plunged again into absorbing work. One sees

that she worked with her imagination; that she obeyed her intuitions;

that she proved the originality and inventiveness of love; and her

efforts were so rewarded that 1884 was her _annus mirabilis_, at the end

of which she wrote: "Can you imagine the bewilderment that comes over me

when I sit down to convey some idea of the wonderful way in which God

has led and helped us during the year? ... It is not too much to say

that during the past twelve months we have passed from the position of a

small and almost unknown mission to that of a great spiritual power,

recognised and felt throughout France and Switzerland."

A series of fresh inspirations contributed to this result. The first of

these was the visitation of the cafes of Paris. One winter night the

Marechale and two young comrades, Blanche Young and Kate Patrick, went

out with shawls on their heads, and made their way to one of the

boulevard cafes. The leader passed the door, and passed it again. She

turned to her lieutenants and said, "You have never known your Marechale

till now; you see what a coward she is!"

[Illustration: THE MARECHALE IN THE CAFE

(From the painting of Baron Cederstroem,

now in the Picture Gallery of Stockholm)]

"No, no, no!" they both protested.

At last she put her hand on the door, pushed it open, and went in. A

man in a white apron was selling drink. Going up to him, she said, "May

I sing something?"

He stared open-mouthed.

Trembling from head to foot, she repeated, "I should like to sing

something."

"Very well!"

She began:

"Le ciel est ma belle patrie,

Les anges y font leur sejour;

Le soldat qui lutte et qui prie

Y sera bientot a son tour."

While she sang, Blanche chimed in with her guitar and her second voice.

As they proceeded, the smoking, drinking, and card-playing ceased, and

every face was turned towards them. They sang on:

"En marche, en marche,

Soldats, vers la patrie!

En marche, en marche,

Soldats, vers la patrie!"

When they had finished the hymn, the Marechale thanked her audience,

adding that they could hear her again at Rue Auber Hall; and that she

knew a Friend, of whom she wished to tell them. As she and her comrades

turned to walk out, the man in the white apron bowed, as if they had

done him a service.

"May I come another time?" said the Marechale.

"Certainly, Mademoiselle!"

They visited sixteen cafes that night, and when she got home she felt

she had never been happier in her life, never nearer to Jesus. She had

tried in her own way to obey His command, "Let your light shine before

men." Since then, thousands and thousands of cafes have been visited,

and much good has thus been done. Let one case stand for many.

There used to be a well-known resort in Paris called the Cafe de

l'Enfer, the windows and walls of which were painted with lurid scenes

representing hell. There rouged and powdered singing girls entertained

people of the dare-devil type, who sat drinking and smoking at little

tables. From an open coffin a grim skeleton stared at everybody, and

prizes were given for the most audacious witticisms about death. The

more outrageous the blasphemies were, the louder were the roars of

applause with which they were received.

But the Marechale and her young lieutenants, "armed in complete

steel"--the panoply of God--were not afraid of the gates of hell. Having

obtained permission to sing, they mounted the _estrade_, and rendered

some of their most attractive part-songs. The cafe orchestra at once

took up the airs as if it had been paid to do so. The songs of Paradise

were well received even in those regions, and then the Marechale,

stepping forward, made a little speech:

"You are very clever here. You _play_ very well. But it is a role that

you play. Your laughter is not real; I can tell you the source of true

laughter and true joy. This is not life, it is death; I can tell you

what real life is. This is not peace, it is an effort to drown care and

forget trouble; I can tell you the secret of peace. Let me give you my

address, where you can hear us sing again."

It required as much moral courage to deliver that speech as to face all

the jurists of Helvetia.

When the Marechale was leaving, she passed a lovely girl, in whose ear

she whispered, "What are you doing here? you ought to be in bed."

"Who will give _me_ a supper or a bed?" the girl plaintively asked.

"_I_ will!" exclaimed the Marechale; "come with me, quick!"

She hailed a cab, put the girl in, and drove away. The poor child,

eighteen years of age, had a sad tale to tell. She had noble blood in

her veins, and her mother and she had both been cruelly wronged. The

Marechale led her to Christ and ultimately secured for her a position in

one of the best colleges of America, where she was universally

respected. Not long after she was installed there, she sent the

Marechale 500 francs, with the pathetic message, "Save another, as you

saved me."

The Marechale's methods naturally gave offence to those who had not the

courage to adopt them. Late one night she and some comrades were

standing at the door of a theatre while it was emptying. One of her

young officers cried in clear, penetrating tones, "Prepare to meet thy

God!" The words seemed to send an electric shock through the gay crowd.

Thereupon a gentleman came forward to the Marechale and said:

"Mademoiselle, you are evidently young girls of good family, and I am

scandalised to see you here at this hour. I, too, occupy myself with

preaching, but I am shocked at your behaviour."

"Really?" she replied, "and I am scandalised that you are scandalised.

You profess to believe the Gospel. How are you to get these indifferent

tens of thousands to hear of the Saviour? They won't come to listen to

you. What more natural and more in accord with the principles of Jesus,

than to go to them and compel them to hear?"

Ten minutes after, the gentleman returned and slid a five-franc piece

into her hand, saying:

"It is you who are right!"

It was impossible for young girls to be in the boulevards towards

midnight without being sometimes molested. But the leader would

instruct her soldiers thus: "If they say the vilest things in the world

to you, remember that is only the outside. Think of their souls which

cost so dear to Christ. Say one or two sentences that will remain with

them, and pass on."

More than once she proved this method of dealing to be very effective.

In a corner of one of the boulevards a "gentleman" approached her and

asked for a rendezvous. She looked at him in silence, which he took for

consent.

"Where?" he asked, taking out his pencil and note-book.

"_Devant le Trone de Dieu!_" (Before the Throne of God!)

The man took to his heels, and ran.

That went all over France. One day the same sword will pierce the

conscience of every roue in the universe.

The Marechale's second original idea was to begin a series of

_Conferences_ (Meetings) in the fashionable Lecture Hall of the

Boulevard des Capucines. Her increasing popularity only deepened her

sense of duty to the city of her adoption, and suggested to her the

possibility of bringing Christ to the Boulevards as well as to the

Villette. She could not live in gay Paris without profoundly pitying

the thoughtless, infidel Rich, for whom it is proverbially so hard to

enter the kingdom of heaven. Her idea of attacking the central

stronghold of the world's fashion and pleasure was a daring one for a

woman, especially for a woman of the Marechale's youthful years. About

this time she read the _Life of Napoleon_, and found in his astonishing

career many lessons for an evangelist. She was especially struck by his

faith in his star, and his contempt for "_ce bete de mot, impossible_."

She knew that she had something better to trust than a star, and

stronger reason for holding that all things are possible.

Her new plan of campaign was great alike in its conception and its

execution. From the very first the Conferences for men were

astonishingly successful, and they were renewed year after year. The

audiences were very different from a Keswick or Northfield congregation,

in which the preaching is mostly to the converted. Perhaps the best

parallel to the Marechale's Conferences is to be found in Professor

Drummond's Sunday evening meetings for students (men only) in the

Oddfellows Hall, Edinburgh, which, by a strange coincidence, began in

the same year. Having enjoyed the friendship of both these evangelists,

and listened to them many scores of times, I have often been forcibly

struck by their likeness to each other, and for power to rivet the

attention and inspire the confidence of cultivated men of the world I

have met nobody to compare with them.

When the Marechale came to hold her first Conference, the proprietor of

the hall entered her ante-room and advised her to deliver a sort of

ethical lecture, rather than speak of salvation, as it was the worldly

fashionable public who would assemble, and he was afraid they would not

be pleased if they heard too much of religion. But they listened with

rapt attention while she spoke on the text "Without God and without hope

in the world." Of the second Conference Galignani's Messenger said,

"The subject, 'The Greatest Sin,' was treated with a force of religious

arguments which made a visible impression on many persons in the

audience. The attention was deep and respectful. The Hall was crowded,

and the doors were vainly besieged by a numerous crowd, the greater part

of whom remained outside the open windows to hear the address." Another

leading journal said, "She has profoundly astonished the citizen

sceptic, who has been out of the habit of being astonished for a long

time."

Her brother Ballington was present at a later meeting, and described the

impression made on himself as one who did not know French. "I had to

cover my face more than once while our Marechale spoke. Her words,

though in a foreign language, yet seemed understandable. The Spirit

does not confine Himself to words alone. He speaks through the

countenance, and eyes, and hands--He fills the Temples of His children.

Three things struck me in that meeting: first, the rapt attention and

interest of the audience, and there seemed few who were not impressed at

the close; second, the manner in which the people remained in the

after-meeting on to the end; third, the utter amazement, and yet perfect

solemnity of the congregation, when some sinner came up through the

aisles to seek peace, even rising as though to make sure that what they

saw was a fact." Then he adds--and one notes the beautiful

transition--"I was also present and took part in meetings at Paris in

which the very poorest were attending by hundreds, and at which I saw

men of the vilest caste and life getting saved." No small part of the

Marechale's charm lay in her flexibility and adaptability--her Pauline

habit of becoming all things to all men--to the rich and to the poor, to

the wise and to the unwise--that she might win some.

At a later time the Marechale delivered somewhat similar addresses in

other cities of France such as Nimes, Marseilles, Havre, Rouen,

Lyons--and she was everywhere astonished to find that the French, who

seem the most thoughtless, are yet among the most thoughtful people in

the world. The result of such Conferences as these cannot be tabulated.

For one thing, they made the Marechale more than ever a mother-confessor

and spiritual director. The thoughts of many hearts were revealed to her

at private interviews of which no record was kept, and in letters, one

of which may be given as containing the secret of the Marechale's

power--her possession of Christ's Spirit--a second as showing the abyss

of doubt from which many of her hearers had to be rescued, and some

others as indicating the wonderful success which often attended her

efforts.

The first runs as follows: "I am glad you accept my request to visit my

home. You will consider the intention in asking you to come under my

roof, like One before you, who had the noblest Heart which ever beat for

mankind. It is because this Great Heart has possessed yours to the

degree of rendering you like Himself, that you have profoundly moved me

and made me better. Certainly I will speak with you on these vital

subjects, but I need more and more the moral and spiritual atmosphere of

the meetings: this opens the heart and at the same time deadens the

opposition of the mind. Oh, if the latter could hold its peace! ... I

have lived much in solitude, and naturally these problems have been

always with me. I may say that the Infinite has tortured me for twenty

years: lately I have arrived at the conclusion that one can know

nothing. So I shall be glad to speak with you and at length."

A second correspondent wrote: "Your marvellous faith, your simple and

powerful eloquence so deeply moved me that I cannot but thank you. I

thank you as an artist, as a sincere admirer of beautiful work, of great

characters; I thank you as a man blase, sceptical, benumbed and

deadened. As a child I adored Jesus, and now, after having thought much

and suffered infinite pains which you cannot understand, I have said

adieu to faith and also adieu to hope! I have become one of those you

call sceptics. Ah! do not say 'terrible' sceptic, but unfortunate,

pitiable, unhappy sceptic. You are, Madame, a great, beautiful,

generous heart, and if ever earnest good wishes have been worth

anything, I have cherished them for you, your work, and those who fight

by your side. You will believe me, an unbeliever, who envies you,

admires you, and ideally loves you."

A third of her hearers wrote succinctly: "Two of your meetings have

sufficed to destroy infidel convictions of twenty years' standing."

A fourth, after testifying to his respect and confidence, said: "What

your soul yearns for is conversion. You would like me to add, I am

converted. I cannot say that I am. But you have made an incredible

impression on me, and you have made me love the Christ I never loved."

He evidently could not rest there, and soon he sent a second letter,

describing with thankfulness how one night, in prayer and agonising

mental controversy, he had received a manifestation of the Holy Spirit,

which had finally slain his doubt and made him a believer in God.

The twofold purpose of the Conferences was to conquer the feelings and

tastes, the etiquette and conventionality, of people of the world, and

to awaken faith in unbelievers. One day a very bad man thrust some

bank-notes into the Marechale's hand, saying while he did so:

"I believe in nothing."

"You believe in nothing, and yet you give me these bank-notes!"

He replied, "I believe in you, and I wish you had a hall in every town

and hamlet and village in my country."

"Pull out your watch," she said. "I believe in your watch, I believe

that it keeps time, but I do not believe in its maker! ... I am

naturally just as great a lover of ease and comfort as you are. The

motive power--_la force motrice_--of my life, the spring upon which

everything turns, is the love of Christ. You believe in me; believe in

Him who has made me what I am."

The Marechale's third new departure was perhaps the most important of

all--the founding of an Ecole Militaire, or school for cadets, somewhat

similar to the Military School at Clapton, over which her sister Emma at

that time presided. When Catherine first went to France, a very noted

Protestant pastor said to her, "You will never get three Frenchwomen to

live together in peace." But at the Training Home, Avenue Lumiere 3, in

the Villette, where the Marechale lived all the year round with her

officers, there were as many as forty or fifty young women--among whom,

at one time, a Princess's daughters were side by side with scullery

maids--and the harmony, the love, the spirit of "never mind me," which

prevailed was one of the miracles of the work in France.

To the training of company after company of young cadets--French, Swiss,

English, Belgian, German, Italian and Russian--the Marechale gave a

great deal of her time and strength, her pattern being ever our Lord's

own training of the Twelve. All obeyed her joyfully and without

question. She realised intuitively that the highest thing in training

is not discipline, but something which discipline follows as light

follows the sun. That something is the spirit, the atmosphere, which

men and women are brought into and which transforms them. In the Ecole

Militaire it was the selflessness of people who did not care what became

of them. Where that spirit takes possession of any one, there is no

need to say to him, "You shall do this or that." The law of the spirit

of life makes him obedient without constraint.

The spirit of the Marechale's leadership is somewhat expressed in

Garibaldi's call to arms often quoted by her. His followers understood

his motives, realised his disinterestedness, saw that rewards and

honours were nothing to the man who was seeking the Liberty of Italy.

Therefore they loved him so much that they would have died for him.

There was no marked difference between the Staff and the Field, and yet

there was discipline, obedience, devotion such as the world has scarcely

ever seen equalled.

That was the spirit which the Marechale sought to impart to the Ecole

Militaire. Everything else--how to study the Bible, how to conduct

meetings, how to use the voice, how to deal with souls--was subordinated

by her to the one thing needful--the spirit of sacrifice. "We are

sometimes told," she once wrote, "that our uniforms, our young women

speaking in public, our tambourines and our processions bring contempt

upon religion. It is a mistake. That which is the laughing-stock of

the world and of hell is a religion without sacrifice. People will

never believe in Christians who, while professing to be disciples of Him

who had not where to lay His head, live in luxury, seek first the

comfort of their family, the health and position of their children, and

let their souls perish for lack of that Gospel which they profess to

believe. _There_ is the secret of the unbelief of France; that is what

makes the young who are in search of the truth cry 'Comedy!' On the

other hand, those faces which radiate the light from on high, those

young people who rise up to give themselves to God instead of the world,

those men and women who declare, with a sincerity which leaves no room

for doubt, that they consecrate their life to God for the saving of

souls, are more eloquent than the most beautiful discourses."

The faces of officers and cadets who surrounded the Marechale on her

platform undoubtedly constituted a large element of her power. Renee

Gange, the Socialist, wrote a fine appreciation of her and her comrades,

in which she confesses that what she finds "remarkable among these young

girls, pretty as well as plain, is the complete absence of the ordinary

feminine expression.... In looking with searching, scrutinising eye at

the faces enveloped in this ugly bonnet, we have not deciphered the

least vestige of this expression, neither timidity, nor awkwardness, nor

restlessness, nor the consciousness that people are thinking of them.

Nothing. These faces are the free faces of free creatures."

One day a French Baron, who had received a great blessing at the

Marechale's Conferences, said to her in the great hall at the Rue Auber,

"What you lack here is pictures; for instance, the saints. Those

beautiful faces, with their sweet celestial expressions, diffuse a

sentiment of reverence and quietness, and they would form such a

beautiful background to you. You should have the Virgin, and Saint

Francis, and many others. That is what you lack in all your halls:

could we not do something?"

"Baron," said the Marechale, "will you come here next Sunday evening?"

"Yes, certainly. Are you going to speak?" He never lost a chance of

hearing her.

"Yes; be sure you do not miss it."

Next Sunday evening she marshalled her little group of officers. She

filed them in, men on one side, women on the other. She stood in the

midst of them and spoke. At the end of the meeting the Baron came

forward.

"Marechale," he said, "you have no need of pictures. Those figures!

those faces! _they_ are your pictures."

Her friend Frank Crossley was greatly struck by this incident. He

wrote: "I was specially interested in the remark upon inspired faces. I

once heard Rendel Harris say of the biblical critics, that they might

tear the volume into shreds, but never could rub off the light of God

from the faces of His people."

One of the cadets of the Ecole Militaire was Constance Monod, daughter

of the great Protestant preacher whose hymn, "Oh, the bitter shame and

sorrow," is known everywhere. Having received salvation and rich

spiritual blessings from attending the Marechale's meetings, she became

one of her most devoted officers and warmest friends. She was one day

put up to speak to a very rough audience of lewd, low men, and one of

the roughest and lewdest of them said, with tears in his eyes:

"Oh, what extraordinary purity in that face!"

That was the expression which gave so many of the cadets their power in

the cafes and in the slums. It was what they were, far more than what

they said, that did the work.

Among the new cadets there was always a great heart-searching. Were

they sure of their vocation? Had they a due sense of the seriousness,

the sacredness, the responsibility, the opportunity of the call to work

and fight for God? If they were not right there, everything was wrong.

But if they had really left the world, and come to learn to know GOD, He

revealed Himself to them, and it was marvellous how rapidly they grew in

that heart-knowledge which is always so much deeper than head-knowledge.

Whenever troubles and difficulties arose, the Marechale's method was not

to evade them, but to grip things at the bottom. An invitation to "come

and have a cup of tea" would lead to earnest talk and prayer, by which

she nipped many an evil in the bud. These "personals," as such

interviews were called, were remembered ever afterwards with gratitude.

The conquest of self, the triumph of the spirit of love, was illustrated

in small matters as well as in great. One day a Frenchman, Francois,

refused to clean the boots of another cadet, who was a German.

"I clean a German's boots? Never! never!" The Marechale quietly said:

"The boots will be cleaned."

"Never by me!"

"By you."

"Well, not now, let them wait!"

The whole day passed, and the boots were not cleaned. The Marechale

knew what Francois suffered inwardly, and got him alone in the evening.

"Jesus died for the Germans," she said.

His lips remained tightly pressed. He suffered, and she suffered with

him. After a moment's silence he burst into a torrent.

"We have endured too much! Think of the siege of Paris. That beast of

a Bismarck! Oh! our country has suffered. Clean a German's boots?

Never!"

He raved. The Marechale was quiet and listened for a time. Then she

said:

"All that may be true; but you are going to have a greater victory over

the Germans than ever the Germans won over you. The triumph which they

had over France was a flea-bite in comparison."

She got his ear, and talked to him of the highest things. The victory

which Jesus won on Calvary over Pilate and the Priests and Judas, this

must be Francois' victory.

"Go back to your trade unless you can win this victory. This makes an

apostle of Francois, and nothing else. These boots are only a detail,

but they have brought to light something in you that is hindering the

great victory."

And so they talked. She would not force him. Next morning she gave a

lecture, at the end of which he came into her room and sat down. There

was a moment's silence, and then he collapsed, falling all of a heap and

sobbing like a child.

"Marechale," he said, "I will clean the boots!"

Such training inside the Ecole made the cadets ready for any conflict

outside, and the triumph of the spirit of love was in some instances a

preparation for death. The first of the Marechale's cadets to win the

martyr's crown was Louis Jeanmonod.

He was a Swiss youth, finely built, nearly six foot, and twenty-one

years of age; a true soldier, devoted, courageous, tender-hearted. His

months of training were almost over, and in the last three weeks he

developed wonderfully. He visited the cafes with great success, singing

and speaking, holding his auditors in breathless silence. He had great

power in convicting people, and often his opponents would become his

friends and ask him to continue to speak to them.

On a January night in 1885 he was guarding the door of the Hall at the

Quai de Valmey, when one of the roughs ran at him head foremost and

butted him violently in the stomach. Louis managed to shut the door, and

next day went on bravely with his work, even selling the _En Avant_ in

the evening, till the pain became very severe. The doctor found that a

quantity of blood had already settled in his lungs, and soon after

pronounced his case beyond all human skill.

Louis was for a time delirious, but he had never in his past life played

the fool, and he uttered no word that his mother would not have wished

to hear. He always seemed to be starting on a campaign. Were the caps,

the bags, and everything else ready? Oh! what glorious times were

coming!

When the delirium passed, and his mind became calm, his pallid face

shone with a strange light. As soon as the Marechale came to his

bedside, he saluted and said--

"Amen, Marechale, amen!"

What were his thoughts of the ruffian who had dealt the deadly blow? He

had only a single thought--"One day he will be saved." Detectives came

to receive the dying man's description of the assailant. A message from

them to this effect was conveyed to Louis, who answered it in a single

word:

"_Jamais!_" (Never!)

But he described the guilty man to the Marechale, that she might know

him and pray for him.

Seeking her hand when the end drew near, he said--

"Oh, I love so much to hold your fingers."

"Jesus will take your hands, Louis, and guide you into the port."

"I will--let myself--be guided--by Him."

The Marechale prayed, and with the spirit of Saint Stephen in his breast

and the words "It is too beautiful!" on his lips, he went to be with

Christ. Belleville and the Villette were stirred to the depths by a

martyr's funeral, and at the grave Theodore Monod spoke words which

moved the hearts of all.

The young Marechale who gathered round her men and women of this

stamp--a willing people in the day of the Lord's power, ready for

everything, faithful unto death--evidently possessed high qualities of

leadership, and ere long the spirit of the Ecole Militaire was to be

found in every station of the Army throughout France and Switzerland.

Speaking at one of the General's great meetings in Scotland, Professor

Henry Drummond said that after travelling all over the South of Europe,

visiting many cathedrals and hearing famous orators, he had landed at

Marseilles, and felt more of the presence and power of Christ in the

Salvation Army meeting-place of that town than he had experienced in all

his wanderings. The General repeated this to the Marechale, and she

found that the meeting which had so profoundly impressed the Professor

had been conducted by a young officer, Mlle. Dormois, who had recently

left the Training School in Paris.

That the authorities at home praised God for the Marechale's work

scarcely needs saying. Her father's appreciation found expression in

every letter. Here are brief extracts from three of them.

"My dear girl, my very precious girl, I know you are after my own heart.

I place boundless confidence in your judgment and resolutions. Do not

be afraid of anything or any one."

"You are a true heroine, a Joan of Arc, indeed."

"You must have a fearful strain upon you. Still a great part of your

business is to keep yourself quiet and free from wearing care. To be

cool and steady under fire is the quality of the very best soldiers. I

fear I have not excelled in this direction, and it is a very difficult

property in our family, seeing how full of sympathy and feeling our

hearts and lives are, but God can do much for us."

Every letter from her eldest brother Bramwell, who was the Chief of

Staff, was a "Well done!" from over the sea. Writing in 1885--the year

of his and Stead's heroic crusade against vice--he said: "I get more and

more dissatisfied with things human every day. The world is all gone

mad. If it was only bad, and not mad, we could mend it, but being both

I get less and less hope instead of more! We will now attend to quality

more. If we could get _better_ people surely we should go faster. I

solemnly believe you are ahead of us on the Continent in this

direction."

In the following year he wrote: "Do not think you will ever be less dear

to me than you have been. You cannot be. I love and admire you, and if

you were my general to-morrow I should follow you to the last gasp and

stick while there was one limb of me left."

*CHAPTER VII*

*WOMAN'S VOCATION*

"There can be neither Jew nor Greek; there can be neither bond nor free;

there can be no male and female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."

After the lapse of many centuries this great apostolic saying is

beginning to yield up its meaning and its blessing. The Mother of the

Army was one of the first to assert woman's liberty, and her daughters

entered into a sacred heritage. Having become a public speaker at

fourteen, and seen the work of faith rewarded with countless signs

following, the Marechale could never harbour any secret fear that her

ministry might be grieving the Spirit of God. It was impossible,

however, that she should work for years without encountering many who

had strong prejudices. Our Lord's disciples "marvelled that He spake

with a woman," and there are still disciples who marvel when a woman

speaks for Him.

In the summer of her third year in France, the Marechale attacked the

old city of Nimes, in the largely Protestant Gard--the first of a series

of campaigns which were the means of bringing a blessing to a number of

the provinces of France. On her arrival she found that M. Peyron, an

eminent judge, who had greatly benefited from hearing her before, had

arranged a preliminary meeting of the orthodox of Nimes--pastors and

their wives and other Protestant workers--to the number of about 120.

He was anxious that they should be won before her campaign began, but he

had no idea that he had prepared for her one of the battles royal of her

life.

The meeting being thrown open, the doctrine of holiness--God's power to

keep His children from sinning--first came up, and was violently

attacked by several pastors who confounded it with perfectionism. Their

remarks were loudly applauded, and one lady screamed above the rest--

"Let him that is without sin get up and testify."

Greatly daring, the Marechale whispered to a comrade who sat beside her,

"Rise, Bisson," which he did, and in a few simple words testified, not

indeed to his own perfection, but to God's power to sanctify and keep as

well as justify.

After a momentary lull, the storm became fiercer than ever, and the

ministry of women was now the cause of war. The Marechale alluded to

her mother's manifesto on the subject.

"We have read it," said a lady, "and we do not agree with it. Women are

meant for the home. They are commanded to be silent in the churches."

"Besides," cried another, "you are not old enough."

The Marechale quoted the words, "Let no man despise thy youth."

"But that," retorted a pastor's wife, "was said to a man."

Thereupon the babel of voices became deafening.

"Pretty and prepossessing girls," a matron was heard to say, "should not

show themselves in public."

"If you do speak," said a pastor, skilled in distinctions, "you should

speak to women only, and not before men."

All through the storm the central figure was quiet and self-possessed.

But she was thinking hard. The idea of a distinction in sex had never

come before her as a speaker; it was new and strange to her. When she

at length spoke again, she put the result of her thinking into a simple,

memorable, unanswerable dictum:

"But there is no sex in soul."

Perhaps somebody had said the same thing before, but it was none the

less original on her part. Then she expanded the truth:

"The needs of a man's soul are the same as a woman's, and vice versa.

You do not get up and say there are so many men and so many women in a

meeting. They all need salvation, pardon, purity, peace; all the gifts

and graces of the Spirit are for men and women alike. Of course," she

continued, "if any woman is so light and frivolous that she makes such a

distinction, that certainly proves that she has no vocation to be an

evangelist, and I should send her home by the next train."

She felt that the atmosphere of the room was horrible. Religious

controversies, like religious wars, create a more frightful spirit than

any other quarrels. Instead of prolonging the discussion, the Marechale

sank on her knees and began to pray. She had won by prayer many

victories which were remembered after long years. When she was a child

of fourteen, she attended a meeting of her mother's at Ryde in the Isle

of Wight. She sat far back beside the door, listening till the address

was ended, and then she heard her mother ask if some brother or sister

would pray. As nobody responded, and the silence became too oppressive

to bear, Katie rose and poured out her heart to God in tones of

passionate earnestness, seeking for a victory ere the meeting ended.

When she got home, she was folded in her mother's arms and covered with

kisses; and forty years after, when she was herself conducting a mission

at Ryde, a saintly lady of ninety-two told her that no prayer lived in

her memory like that child's prayer.

It was such a prayer--long, intense, passionate--that the Marechale

prayed among the orthodox of Nimes. That night the eldest daughter of

M. Peyron, a beautiful, worldly girl, was won for Christ. At seven

o'clock on the following morning two pastors, MM. Challand and Babut,

along with M. Peyron, awoke the Marechale. They had come to say, for

themselves and others, how they deplored the scene of the preceding

night, and to beg forgiveness.

On Sunday morning the campaign proper was begun in the Alcasar, which

was packed, and the wives of several pastors were among those who came

in tears to the penitent form. Albin Peyron, junior, who is to-day the

leader of the Army in Switzerland, began the new life at a "Night with

Jesus" which was held after that meeting. In his youth he was the

founder of _La Petite Armee_, which did much good work among the

children of Nimes and other towns of Southern France.

While the Marechale was always at home in crowds, she loved quiet

interviews with individuals if possible still more. In many of these

talks the subject was the victory of faith. During one of her

_tournees_, she was conducting meetings in a theatre at Cannes. On a

lovely September evening she was walking towards the sea, lost in

admiration of the sunset. Fatigued with her Sunday morning's work, she

was seeking a little repose. She observed a priest slowly proceeding

towards the hill on which stood a little Catholic church. His

appearance struck her; he looked at once so distinguished and so sad.

An inner voice said to her, "Speak to that priest." "I cannot," she

said, "he would think me mad." But the voice said the same words a

second time, and then she instantly obeyed. Hurrying towards the

priest, she said--

"Good-evening, _mon pere_. I presume you are going to the church on the

hill. May I accompany you, for I would speak with you on spiritual

subjects?"

Uncovering his head, and bowing with great respect, he answered,

"Certainly, madame."

They walked on for a little in silence. Then she said--

"What must I do to be saved, my father?"

"Keep the ten commandments," he answered at once.

"But the rich young man who came to Jesus could say with his hand on his

heart that he had kept them all, and yet had no assurance of salvation.

He was in great trouble. _He_ said, 'What must I do to be saved?'"

"Oh, then you must take the holy Eucharist very often."

"But those who take it, my father, are they saved from sinning? Are

they not the victims of the power of evil, the same as others?"

"Oh! yes, madame, but then there is the Confessional."

"But does not the same thing apply to the Confessional, my father? You

must know that there are tens of thousands in France who confess, but

fall again the next day. They have not found rest. Is not Christ ready

to save us if we are ready to be saved?"

"Alas! madame, we shall sin always, always, to the very end of our

lives."

"But, my father, were not St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, St.

Catherine of Siena, Fenelon and many others, delivered from the slavery

of sin and self? They attained to something definite--to holiness."

He turned with vehemence and said, raising his voice--

"Ah! madame, but those were extraordinary lives. Those people were

saints."

"No, my father, they were men and women like you and me. What God did

for St. Augustine or St. Catherine of Siena, can He not do it for me if

I am ready to fulfil the conditions which He lays down? What does

religion do, what is it worth, if it cannot deliver us from sin?"

He did not answer. He was silently thinking.

She went on, "Is Christ a Saviour, yes or no?"

"Oh, yes, yes, yes, He is!"

"Has He saved _you_, my father?"

They stood still for a moment, and he turned his face away, with a look

of poignant sadness. Then followed a confession--one of the deepest,

most heartfelt cries she had ever listened to--ending with the words,

"Alas, alas! all the days of my life I sin, and I expect to sin to my

latest breath."

The Marechale was profoundly moved, and felt that she stood upon holy

ground. At last she spoke--

"Then Calvary is the greatest fiasco the world has ever seen."

Stretching out his hand, he said, "Oh, madame, do not say that; it is

blasphemy."

"But, my father, we are in the presence of facts, not fancies. You have

left what men prize most. You have lived up to your light. And what do

I find? Torment instead of rest, conflict instead of assurance, bondage

instead of deliverance. Surely, my father, Jesus did not come to

increase our burdens, but to relieve them. You remember His word, 'Come

unto me and I will give you rest.' He said, 'My yoke is easy and my

burden is light.' Are these theories to be preached in pulpits, or are

they realities?"

By this time they stood on the summit of the hill, and she said--

"You are going to preach to-night, _mon pere_?"

"Yes."

"Would you like that we should go down the hill together and resume our

conversation?"

"It would be a great pleasure, madame."

He preached one of the best sermons she had ever heard, partly inspired,

she could not help thinking, by their intimate talk. As the

congregation moved out, she stepped into a Confessional box to wait for

him. She saw him turning this way and that with a look of

disappointment, and, stepping out, said to him--

"I am here, _mon pere_."

They began to descend the hill together. "My father," she said, "I

greatly enjoyed your sermon. But how can you show others the way of

deliverance if you have not found it yourself? How can you unbind if

you are not unbound? How can you heal if you are not healed? How, my

father? Do you not see that all this is only from the head, not from

the life, the heart?"

"It is true! But I try, oh, my God, I try!"

"But it does not come in that way--by our struggles."

"Then how?" he exclaimed in a tone of despair.

"Does He not say, 'Abide in me, and ask what you will, and it shall be

done unto you'? Does not St. Paul testify, 'I can do all things through

Christ which strengthened me.' How many have given praise to Him who is

'able to save to the uttermost' and 'able to present us faultless'! Put

Him to the proof. If any one has the right to salvation, surely you

have."

They paused under a tree in the stillness of evening, and, while he

stood with bowed head, she knelt beside him and prayed.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*THE RENUNCIATION OF HOME*

Early in 1887 the Marechale became the wife of Mr. Arthur Sydney

Clibborn, an Irish gentleman of Quaker extraction, lineally descended

from Barclay of Ury, the hero of one of Whittier's finest poems.

Brought up in Bessbrook, which was called the model town from the fact

that there was no public-house, police barracks or pawnshop in it, he

renounced excellent business prospects in answer to a call which first

came to him through a simple, earnest Quaker minister, "Sydney, will

thee not come with us?" The visit of some representatives of

Salvationism to Bessbrook turned the current of his thoughts in a new

direction, making him exclaim, "Here is primitive Quakerism, primitive

Wesleyanism, primitive Christianity!" As he had spent some years at

school in Switzerland, and become proficient in French and German, he

was sent by General Booth to assist the Marechale in France, and acted

as her chief of staff until their marriage.

He was a man of great courage, and received a medal from the French

President for saving life from drowning. As a servant of God he would,

one cannot but think, have made a splendid Huguenot or Covenanter. His

heroic ideal was the persecuted Quaker whose blood he had in his veins.

In the Salvation Army's early days of conflict he was the bravest of the

brave. He was stoned and covered with mud in the streets of Geneva. He

was pursued by a Parisian mob that howled "Down with Jesus Christ!" His

life was attempted many times, and he was condemned to death by the

Nihilists under the seal of the Paris headquarters; but he never went

out of his way to avoid death or use carnal weapons.

Mr. Booth-Clibborn has been specially used of God in removing the

difficulties of those troubled with intellectual doubt and in opening

the eyes of a large number who were in spiritual darkness.

The Marechale was now obliged to leave the Training Home, where her _vie

apostolique_ among her beloved officers and cadets, whose every conflict

and danger she shared, had often seemed to her like life in an earthly

paradise. But whatever new duties and cares came to her in her little

home in the Rue d'Allemagne, she never allowed them to interfere with

her vocation. In the course of fourteen years God gave her five sons

and five daughters, among whom life was infinitely sweet to her, yet all

her public activities were maintained, while her passion for souls

burned with a clear and steady flame.

Loyalty to Christ now assumed a new aspect, and the conditions of

discipleship an added stringency. A great sentence in the

Gospel--"Verily I say unto you, there is no man that hath left house, or

brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or

lands, for my sake, and the Gospel's, but he shall receive an

hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren and sisters and

mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the world to

come eternal life"--burned itself into the Marechale's soul, and she

never doubted that she received her _centuple_ just because she paid the

price.

When she went to any of the towns of France to undertake a difficult

campaign, it was impossible for her to do her duty unless she fixed her

whole mind and heart upon the work. Having to deal with the mass of sin

concentrated in a large mixed audience such as she had to face in these

towns, and knowing, as she used to say, that every person had a skeleton

in the cupboard, she felt that she must become, as it were, the

scapegoat to bear the sins of these people. There was a sense in which

she had to be like Christ in this respect, and so co-operate and suffer

with Him (Col. i. 24). She must go and set herself apart to lift up

hands to God in favour of the city. She must say to every

preoccupation, every earthly tie, "Stand thou there while I go yonder to

pray." She must _live_ for that town and that people for six weeks, or

two or three months. She might do a certain kind of work without giving

her _life_, but it would not be of the apostolic kind. To get the

hundredfold of which Christ spoke she must leave father and mother, home

and child. In some very real way she must sacrifice and suffer. She

had felt this from her childhood, and she now saw it more clearly than

ever; there was always a price to pay. The secret of success in such

cases was the consciousness of a vocation and a passionate love too, and

the personal dealing with the Christ of Calvary.

[Illustration: THE MARECHALE

(From a photograph by Fred. Boissonnas, Paris, circa 1880)]

How hard it became for the Marechale to accept this cross may be

indicated by a touching scene depicted by her secretary, Miss Gugelman,

who is now one of the bravest soldiers of salvation in India.

"'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.' How clearly this was illustrated

when, at a late hour one evening, just at the close of her month's

meetings in Paris, the Marechale bent over her little ones' cots to bid

them good-bye before starting on her three-months' tour through France

and Switzerland. Evangeline, the eldest, had kept awake, for she knew

that her mamma was going away. The little arms were flung round the

warrior-mother's neck, when, raising her sweet tear-stained face, little

Evangeline stammered, '_Maman_, stay with me, or take me with you on

your _tournees_.' Our leader's all too human tears filled her eyes; she

kissed the little pleader, and then wrapped her up in a blanket, and

brought her into the study to see us off. It was painfully clear to us

who were watching her, that the leaving of her little ones for the war's

sake was a heavy cross to the Marechale. Thank God, she shirks it not.

Suppressing her feelings, she went out into the cold and damp, and

started her long all-night journey."

That was in February 1894, and later in the same year she had two of the

finest campaigns of her life--at Havre and Rouen. The turbulent

beginning at Havre was graphically described by her friend the Princess

Malzoff, who accompanied the Marechale in order to have a taste of the

_vie apostolique_. "There was a great tumult in the 'Lyre Havraise.'

The Marechale had come to publish the word of love and salvation. An

immense crowd forced itself into the hall, and who would have dared

believe that they had all come simply to present the world with the most

scandalous, the most vulgar and odious spectacle that one can imagine?

When the Marechale rose with great dignity and calm ... she could not

make herself heard. Every word was interrupted; one could see that it

was a prepared stroke. One might imagine oneself to be in an asylum. But

she did not let herself be discouraged; she persevered; she walked

straight into the midst of the infuriated crowd. She did not tame these

wild beasts, but she came out victorious all the same. Tall, beautiful,

calm, sustained by her divine conviction and with the strength of a

great heart, she came back again and again--our admirable Marechale! ...

In the midst of this infernal and ridiculous tumult a few _elite_ souls

felt a noble enthusiasm for this young woman who battled alone against a

hostile and wicked crowd. They came to grasp her hand, to express their

admiration for her and their shame for those who had broken the simplest

laws of hospitality, politeness and civilisation. Blessed be our

Marechale; in her the whole _Armee du Salut_ was personified that night

in its strength, its faith, its persevering love."

Tributes to "the Marechale under fire" were extorted from all the

reporters. After two or three meetings the atmosphere was changing and

the tide of battle turning, when tidings came from Paris, that

Augustine, the Marechale's little son of two summers, was alarmingly

ill. Then came an indescribable mental conflict, which ended in her

deciding to remain at least another night and hope for better news in

the morning. She called her officers for prayer, and that night spoke

with a power and tenderness which held the vast audience as with a

spell; after which she had Havre for six weeks in the hollow of her

hand.

Next morning she received a reassuring wire from home, and, sitting

alone on the beach, she wrote a hymn that gives perfect expression to

the thought of the _Greater Love_--a hymn that has endeared itself in

France as much to Catholics as to Protestants. It begins:

Qui quitte famille et terre

Pour mon Nom, pour suivre mes pas;

Qui quitte enfants, pere ou mere,

Recoit le centuple ici-bas.

When this hymn was sung in the "Lyre Havraise" a night or two afterwards

by one of the Marechale's young comrades, Mme. Jeanmonod, who had a

beautiful soprano voice, it was received with a burst of sympathetic

applause, and had to be sung over and over again, till the audience knew

it.

Then there was a great harvest of souls to reap. A letter written at

the time gives an idea of the intensity of spirit with which the leader

threw herself into the work.

"Meeting superb! Nothing of its kind since the days of Geneva and

Nimes, and even better in a sense than that, as the infidels rush to

hear me. Perfect order and people pleading to get in. In these first

audiences it has been too risky and excitable to allow any to speak but

me. They applaud everything, that is, when I have finished speaking,

and I never felt more free and regardless of man's opinion. I am

stronger with the rough element alone in my weakness, so much stronger

as I throw myself on them. Yes, I am filled with the life and power of

God for this town. This hour may never come again. My soul is on the

full stretch.... Do you know what the 'Centuple' is for me? That my

children shall become apostles! Oh, I claim that of God, and do you

know there is an assurance in my heart."

In addition to the nightly crowds at the Casino, the Marechale held

afternoon meetings for women only, at which she spoke on such subjects

as "The Role of Woman," "The Mother of Jesus," "The White Robe."

Nothing impressed Havre more than the midnight suppers she gave to the

_filles perdues_ of the town, not a few of whom were constrained to

abandon the life of sin. And so generous were the rich citizens in

their offerings that at the close of the campaign the Marechale was at

length able to realise one of her cherished ideas--the foundation of a

Rescue Home in Paris.

After Havre, the Marechale had a short breathing-space at home, and then

Rouen had to be faced. Again the shadow of the Cross fell upon little

hearts and lives. Victoire, who was nearly five, pleaded with

upstretched arms, "Don't go, mother! stay with us!" (_Ne pars pas,

Maman! Reste avec nous!_) Evangeline, who had just turned six, had

learned the lesson of separation, and, throwing her arms around her

mother, said, "Maman, if you do go to Rouen, will some souls be saved

that would not be saved if you did not go?"

"Yes; most likely so."

"Then go, Maman!"

And Maman went.

While the good Catholic of Rouen was shocked, the man in the street was

amused, at the idea of worshipping God in the _Theatre Francais_ instead

of the stately cathedral, and between them they contrived to make the

thing impossible. What, they asked, could be more grotesque than

preaching and singing hymns on the stage? At the opening meeting the

Marechale herself obtained a fairly good hearing, but a hostile element

was present which every now and then convulsed the audience with

laughter by some comical exclamation; and when one of her comrades

attempted to close the meeting with prayer, the rout was complete.

Prayer in a theatre was the limit, and next day the Marechale was

informed by the Mayor that he must pacify the public by terminating

these proceedings.

The great Casino, at the corner of the square in which Joan of Arc was

burned, was then secured, and the Marechale began to deliver a series of

addresses on "The Holy Mother of Jesus," "Nineteenth Century Miracles,"

"Confession," "Restitution," "The Saints," "The Pater Noster," "My

Credo," "The Altar." The crowds that filled the hall to overflowing

were amazed to find that these subjects were all dealt with quite

unecclesiastically, and with such an exclusive application to the

individual heart and life that sacerdotalism became, as it were,

non-existent, while the sinner and the Saviour were made manifest and

left face to face. The people who came with minds alert left with

hearts melted and consciences aroused. Soon there were great numbers of

souls seeking spiritual help, and the Marechale announced that she would

meet the convicted and anxious in one of the rooms of the Casino. No

fewer than four hundred sought private interviews in that place, which

thus became a confessional of the simple, primitive order. Not by

priestly absolution, but through personal contact with the one High

Priest and Mediator, was sin remitted and salvation won.

So many Catholics were converted that the head of one of the seminaries

thought it necessary to preach against the _Armee du Salut_. An

influential abbe, on the other hand, said: "I cannot, of course, agree

with the Salvationists, but I am absolutely convinced of their

sincerity, and I am certain they are far nearer salvation than the

majority of Catholics." The _cure_ of the largest _paroisse_ attended

one day in his _soutane_, gave an offering for the mission, and bought

the publications at the door. When the Marechale was about to speak to

women alone on the Holy Mother, two priests expressed their desire to be

present, and she had them concealed behind a curtain. At the end they

were deeply moved, and assured her they had not heard a single word with

which they were not in heartiest agreement. Such was the deep spiritual

impression made upon the town that a newspaper was published containing

nothing but accounts of her meetings and the work going on in the

Casino.

During all her years in France the Marechale never posed as a Protestant

and never attacked Catholicism. Creeds, ceremonies, penances,

pilgrimages--these things were to her neither here nor there. She

always went for the real, and she found in Christ not only true divinity

but perfect humanity. Her sermon on the Virgin melted thousands of

Catholic hearts, and her fundamental doctrine of sacrifice never failed

to evoke a response from the Latin races. She was an eager student--so

far as the "apostolic life" permitted--of the writings of Catherine of

Siena, Thomas a Kempis, Madame Guyon and Fenelon, claiming kinship with

all who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth.

Thus she had great power over Catholics as well as Protestants and

infidels. One of her most devoted officers, M. le Roux, had, after a

brilliant career as a Catholic student, completed his preparation for

the priesthood and received the tonsure, when he came under her

influence and found his life completely changed. And the following

letter received from a lady-professor in Rouen indicates the kind of

impression which was made on many Catholic minds.

"Dear Marechale, I wish to do what I have not yet dared to do when face

to face with you--that is, to express the pleasure which I have found in

your charming Conferences. They have moved and troubled me to such an

extent, have thrown such light in my heart and mind, that I ask myself

what is going on within me. Your addresses, so simple and yet so high,

so suited to your hearers, so consecutive, have influenced me more than

all the beautiful sermons of the monks. You have made me understand

that God asks something else from us than outward practices and empty

ceremonial, and I feel that you have renewed a faith in me that had

nearly disappeared. You have made me taste, thanks to your deep

convictions and the warmth of your speech, one of the purest joys I have

ever known.... Be blessed a thousand times, Marechale, for having

revealed my religion to be under a new light, for having shaken this

apathy which rendered me incapable of every generous impulse, for having

made me more sensitive to the sufferings of others. Be blessed in your

children, who one day I hope will reward you nobly for all your

sacrifices. Be blessed in humanity, the great family which you have

elected to live for and which is the object of your care."

Does such a revival as this leave solid and lasting results? Let one

case out of many be presented as evidence that it does. M. Matter was a

distinguished engineer and an officer in the French army. Extracts from

two of his letters tell what the Rouen campaign did for him.

"Beloved Marechale, Three years ago tonight a poor man entered the

Casino through what appeared mere chance. He was burdened with sorrow,

keenly conscious of his sins, but never dreaming of asking the _Armee du

Salut_--which did not even excite his curiosity--to help him, hardly

believing any more in the possibility of salvation for him. God

inspired you; the Holy Spirit made your words penetrate even underneath

the breastplate of sin which covered my poor heart. Two days after I

was born to a new life. From that moment God has strengthened,

protected and directed me. I seek to love Him with all my heart, and I

treasure a deep and loving gratitude to you."

And six years later: "I have made a pilgrimage at night in the deserted

streets to the Casino where God found me and where you were His

ambassador."

This gentleman is now well known all over France for his work among

criminals and drunkards, and his services have been recognised by the

French government. He gets into personal touch with hundreds of

convicts in order to speak to them of the love of God, and down in the

Ardeche he has a Home for four hundred little waifs, mostly the children

of criminals, whom he calls the Marechale's grandchildren, he himself

being her spiritual son.

The last time she visited him in Paris, they were engaged in eager and

intimate talk, when he said, "Do you see that ivory pipe? I have

engraved on it the day of my conversion at Rouen; but since that time I

have never had any inclination to smoke it. And do you see that pile of

letters? These are from my boys in prison. Let me read one of them to

you." Then he read the words of a convict who spoke of prison walls

lighted up with the glory of Christ's presence. And he added, "Do you

remember you said to me when I was in despair over my past life, 'These

hands, which have done so much evil, will bring blessing and salvation

where I can never go.' Your words have literally come true."

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE FRIENDSHIP OF CHRIST*

One night a little card was placed on the _table d'hote_ of the Hotel

Meurice, in the Rue de Rivoli, intimating to the guests that the

Marechale would speak at an informal meeting in the salon after dinner.

Among those who came to see and hear her was a little Russian lady with

deep and thoughtful hazel eyes. She was the celebrated Princess Nancy

(properly Anastasia) Malzoff of the Russian court. One of the Czarinas

died in her arms. She was a friend of King Edward VII, and her

brilliant wit made her a welcome figure in every court of Europe. She

spoke eight languages.

She was now well advanced in life, and thought she had known everybody

worth knowing and seen everything worth seeing in the world. But that

evening was the beginning of a new life of peace and joy such as she had

never dreamed of. From the moment the Marechale opened her lips, she

was fascinated, first by the speaker, and then still more by the

message. Next morning she came in her carriage to the Villette. The

Marechale was scarcely well enough to receive her, but she would not

take a "No." When she entered the Marechale's room, she threw herself

by the bedside and exclaimed, "Oh! tell me, how did you get to know

Him?"

This was the commencement of a seven years' friendship, and during all

that time she was never out of reach without writing the Marechale every

second day.

The Princess was a member of the orthodox Greek Church. Her mother had

married her off at sixteen, and she had eleven children by the time she

was twenty-eight. When she found that her husband had become

unfaithful, she dismissed him with an emphatic "C'est fini!" and for

more than a quarter of a century she had never seen him.

The Marechale listened with deep sympathy to the story of her life, and

then said, "You must forgive him, if you would be forgiven."

"Never, never!"

"Yes, if you want Christ, forgive him. Never mind what he has done, you

must forgive him."

The Princess could not. A struggle went on in her mind for six weeks.

She began to come to the meetings at the Rue Auber, but she had no

peace. The Marechale opened the question again.

"Come now, I want you to write and invite him to meet you at your hotel,

to dine with him, and to forgive him."

A terrible inner controversy ensued, and the Princess became ill over

it. One can scarcely imagine what it all meant to her, and yet

thousands have to go through the same.

Calling one day, the Marechale found her in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

"Princess, how dare you smoke like this?"

"Well, I am surrounded by a thousand devils, blue, black and yellow.

You have been neglecting me."

A ceaseless conflict was raging in her breast, and ere they parted that

day she wrote a letter and said she would send it.

The Marechale called again, and found that the letter had not been sent.

Then the crisis came.

"Princess, you are lost. If you do not forgive, your heavenly Father

will not forgive you."

"I cannot, I cannot."

She was in agony of soul.

"Princess," said the Marechale, "are you perfect? From the little I

know of you I should think you have a very bad temper."

"It is true, it is true."

"Your sins have not been his, but they are sins before God, and have

caused suffering to others. If you want God to forgive your bad temper,

you must forgive him."

The Marechale prayed, and bade her look to the Cross and see how Christ

forgave. Then she told her again what to do.

"Darling, you are to invite him to your apartments; you are to have a

sweet little dinner for him and flowers on the table, and when he comes

you are to kiss him."

"But I cannot!"

"Yes, you will; and remember it is no forgiveness unless you kiss him.

Forgiveness means kissing. Forgive him, and I know peace will come."

"Very well, I will, I will!"

The Marechale chanced to be leaving Paris for a time, and said--

"You will send me a wire when you have done it."

The Princess invited her husband. He made a long night journey. She

kissed him and forgave him. Next day the Marechale received a wire

which made her dance for joy. It ran: "_Tout s'est passe comme vous

l'avez dit, et la paix du Christ m'inonde: Malzoff_" (All is done as you

said, and the peace of Christ floods my soul.)

Her husband died after a few months, and her thankfulness for what she

had done was profound.

The last years of her own life were beautiful. In a letter which she

wrote to General Booth in regard to her friend's health she said: "I owe

a great deal to the Marechale. She has given me a treasure greater than

all the treasures of this world--she has given me a living Christ; she

has put Him not near me, but in me, in my soul, and the gratitude I feel

for that blessing is great." An article from her pen on the Army's work

in Paris contains these words: "The Salle Auber is to me now a holy

place. I feel the presence of Christ there--Christ who has personally

become a living Saviour to me since the Marechale brought me to Him and

committed me to His Divine arms."

Hundreds of letters, the last of which was written in St. Petersburg on

the day before her death, reveal an intensely ardent nature, and prove

that the heart which truly loves never grows old. We translate a few

extracts.

"I will use all my moral forces to prove to you that our mutual

affection has advanced me in the path of holiness which you opened to me

the very first moments I heard you speak. God had pity upon me and sent

you on my _via dolorosa_ to open to me a new horizon, a new heaven. He

carried my heart to you with an intensity of which I did not think

myself capable."

"I have found in you two beings equally precious to me--the first is a

friend I love like a dearly beloved daughter; the second the Marechale

of my Salvation, whose work, vocation and power I admire--that moral

power which you only in the whole world exercise over me. If I had

known you earlier, you would have made a saint of me."

"Not any affection in the world, not even my children's, can replace

yours for me. What does it matter though everybody loves me if you do

not?"

"I know that it is because I have not yet renounced my 'self,' my

'_moi_,' that your absence makes me suffer, but I cannot help it--it is

beyond my power. I know also that the day my 'self' will be chased

away--which is doubtful--I shall love no one, for to love one must be a

self, one must have one's _own_ heart."

"I doubt if there are any others who bear you such a deep, complete,

living, warm and luminous affection. Not that you do not deserve it,

but all natures are not alike, and you know the fault of mine. I cannot

love by halves."

"'Love wisely,' some one advises. That word 'wise' hurts me. I do not

want to be wise in my love for you. I prefer to love madly, and that is

what I do, and you feel it, don't you? Wisdom to the devil when it is a

question of the heart."

"I cannot believe that He must detach us from everything to attach us to

Himself--that would make me very sad. On the contrary I feel that it is

only human love, disinterested love, but deep and living, which can make

us understand Divine love. It is only through human experience that we

can appreciate His great, His mighty, His eternal love for us. All the

life of Jesus is filled with that palpable love for His creatures, and

that is why He is so near to us. Let me therefore love you without

detachment, and the more I love you the more I will love Him."

One of her letters is peculiarly interesting: "I will see the Emperor in

these days, and I will seek strength to speak to him. You see, my

darling, speaking is not enough, one must in such a case pour out one's

soul and feel that a superior force guides one and speaks for one."

It turned out as she hoped. One night she was at the Palace in St.

Petersburg. After dinner the Czar came and seated himself beside her.

Soon they were deep in intimate conversation. She began telling him

what her new-found friend in Paris had done for her. She talked wisely

as he listened attentively. At length he said--

"But, Nancy, _you_ have always been good, always right."

"No," she answered; "till now I have never known the Christ. She has

made Him real to me, brought Him near to me, and He has become what He

never was before--my personal Friend."

*CHAPTER X*

*THE BURNING QUESTION*

It was the often expressed wish of Mrs. Josephine Butler that the

Marechale might be able to join her crusade against the infamous White

Slave Traffic. In one of her earliest letters to her friend she said:

"Dearest Catherine, the wicked party, as you know, have triumphed in the

elections in Switzerland, and the Geneva government has passed that evil

Law which our friends were trying to stop.... How nice it would be if

you and I could _stand up together_ in Geneva, and denounce their

wickedness and proclaim the Saviour. I should love to do so." At a

later time she wrote of her young friend, "Oh, I sometimes think if she

were in the work of our Federation, what a harvest she might bring us

in, or rather bring in for God!"

The Marechale regarded the wish of that saintly and chivalrous woman as

involving a kind of sacred trust. Her own heart was early and deeply

troubled by the darker aspects of our modern civilisation. When she and

her two brave comrades, Florence Soper and Adelaide Cox, took their

first flat in Paris, they were shocked to learn that they had as their

nearest neighbours--above and beneath, to the right and to the

left--families unconsecrated by any marriage tie; and in the course of

their ordinary work they found themselves hourly confronted by all the

devils of vice. The lurid facts, of which most Christians, happily for

their own peace of mind, know little or nothing, were burned into the

souls of these noble women, each of whom dedicated herself to a battle

_a outrance_ against this most appalling form of evil. And have they

not faithfully kept their vow? Are there any living Englishwomen who

have done so much to protect our innocent children and raise our fallen

sisters as these three, who first toiled and suffered and prayed

together thirty years ago in the Villette of Paris?

In redeeming her pledge, the Marechale not only gave midnight suppers to

the _filles dechues_ of the great cities in which she conducted her

campaigns, not only founded Rescue Homes in Paris, Nimes, Lyons and

Brussels, but endeavoured to make the problem of purity a national

question, to be dealt with in a statesmanlike manner by every patriotic

citizen.

She frequently addressed great meetings of the men of Paris and other

cities on this subject, making irresistible appeals to the heart and

conscience. It was astonishing how she carried the most critical

audiences along with her, though now and then an indignant hearer would

leap to his feet and dash out of the hall or theatre in which her

meeting was held.

She steadily refused to believe that nothing could be done for the

_morale_ of Frenchmen, and her faith in the innate chivalry of the

people was amply justified. The respect with which she was heard was a

tribute not only to the personal magnetism of a consecrated life, but to

the Christian ideal of chastity. She was often told by journalists that

any one else, man or woman, daring to utter half the home truths to

which she gave expression would have been hissed out of the town.

Explain it as one will, when she pleaded the sacred cause of womanhood,

men applauded to their own hurt. "Gentlemen," she would exclaim, "I am

not French, but I love your nation. I have made your country mine, and

I realise what France might be but for the worm which gnaws at the root

of your national life. It makes me shudder to think--it makes me

literally sick to see--how many thousands of my sisters, and your

sisters, in your beautiful city are ministers of vice. So many, your

policemen tell me, under twenty, so many under seventeen, so many under

fifteen, and there are even those known to the police who are not in

their teens. Gentlemen, they do not sin alone, for we are all

_solidaires_. They are like your own girls, your wives, your sweet

little daughters. They have hearts, they have brains, they are

intelligent, they would make beautiful mothers, our comrades in life's

journey, helping us and sharing our burdens. And, alas, what have you

made of them? Any nation which can look at _that_ going on in its

cities day by day and night by night, without a word, without a

protest--which can see this splendid asset, woman, who should bear its

sons and daughters, sacrificed and sold to vice, disease, and early

death,--that nation is on the decline. Do not tell me that a man worthy

of the name can be silent in face of these stupendous facts. Such a man

is not a Frenchman.

"I am told that things have always been so, and will always be so. I

hear it said on every hand that this vice is a necessity. That some

women--that the daughters of the poor--should be sacrificed is regarded

as inevitable. Well, then, gentlemen, as you say it is for the public

utility, follow your reasoning to its own logical conclusion, be just to

these poor creatures; do not despise them, do not call them lost,

fallen, prostitutes; be honest and acknowledge them; allow them to stand

at least on the same level as our soldiers who sacrifice themselves for

their country. Far from being ashamed of them, honour them for their

service to our sons and our nation.

"But you say 'it is only _une fille_,' and one of your senators has

publicly said that 'we are come to a fine pass if _an honest man_ cannot

buy himself _une bonne fortune_.' Only a _fille_! Your mothers were

once only _filles_, your wives were only _filles_, and what are your own

daughters? Wherein lies the difference?

"An honest _man_! I am not a nun; I am not a man-hater stalking through

the world. I revere man. He is half a god. Look at his works in every

domain--the king of creation, given that wonderful command to subdue and

rule, having everything under his feet. When he rises to his destiny,

and becomes a co-worker with God, and puts his life and example--that

wonderful miracle called influence--on the side of righteousness, he

rises to the sublime. The sum of happiness, of pure joy and peace, that

one good man can bring to the little group at home, and then to the

community, to the city, to the world, cannot be estimated. And the sum

of misery, the curse, the blight that one man can bring to a woman, to

children, to every one he touches--that, too, cannot be estimated. An

_honest man_! He does not even stop where the cows and horses do. He

goes a thousand miles beneath them! And yet the indulgence of the

passions is no more a necessity than the drinking of alcohol is a

necessity for an infant of a year old. It is society that awakens those

evil desires, and they unfold themselves under the influence of a

baneful education.

"Gentlemen, you say that a bad woman is worse than a bad man. Have you

ever reflected that the wrongs done to her are far deeper? Have you

realised that her make-up is a thousand times more delicate and complex

than yours, and that as a consequence this sin makes shorter work of

her? Her despair is blacker and she is reckless. You take from her the

hope of ever having a little home of her own, of ever having a real

husband, of ever hearing herself called mother. You have done that

before she can realise what you have done. She does not wait, does not

estimate. The realisation comes to her later on in life. And when it

comes, is it any wonder that she flies to drink and becomes a demon?

Would not I? Would not you?

"Say all that you please against woman. Reckon up the sins on your side

and on hers. Still your page is black as ink compared with hers. Think

of the generous, the absolute, the totally blind ways she loves.

'Woman's heart runs down to love

As rivers run to seas.'

"You have your life, your work, your amusements; but love is her whole

existence. She is created in that way. That makes your sin in

deceiving a trusting heart infinitely greater.

"You may go and have a good marriage afterwards, and be proud of your

charming wife's sweet looks, but does not the vision of another, a pale

face sometimes flit across your mind? And when you look at your little

cot, do you not see another baby face--another little life you have

never owned, of which you are the author, and which is equally yours

before God? A woman's heart has been broken, and there will be

retribution."

While the Marechale stood alone, pleading as a woman the cause of woman,

her audiences of educated Frenchmen were sometimes so deeply stirred and

convicted that they would rock and sob under the power of emotion; and

when they rose at the end to sing a hymn that she wrote as a young

girl--a hymn which has been translated into many languages--

Ote tous mes peches!

Ote tous mes peches!

Agneau de Dieu, je viens a toi,

Ote tous mes peches,

the words and music would sweep over the audience like a wave, sending

many away with consciences tortured and faces bathed in tears.

One morning, after such a meeting, there was a ring at the Marechale's

door, and a lady was ushered into her presence. Coming forward without

a word, she took the Marechale's face between her hands, and warmly

embraced her in the French fashion by kissing both her cheeks. The

Marechale inquired what was the meaning of this sweet affection.

"Oh!" said the stranger, "you have restored to me my husband. He was

listening to you last night, and when he came home he fell at my feet

and begged me to pardon him, vowing that he would never again be untrue

to me."

That was but one of the many fruits of these addresses.

Sometimes the Marechale would read to _elite_ audiences a letter which a

man of high social standing wrote to a charming young girl whom he ought

to have made his wife. Having met her at Carnival, he awoke in her

heart an adoring love, deceived her with a promise of marriage, put a

ring on her finger, and after three years abandoned her and her baby

boy. The Marechale took the letter to an eminent jurist and senator,

who confessed that for cold-blooded cruelty he had never seen anything

to equal it; but he sorrowfully added--such are the laws of Christian

lands--that nothing could be done to right the wrong. The letter ran as

follows--

"LITTLE MARIE,

"Once again I must ask pardon for all the harm I have done you. I hope,

however, that you will be strong in trouble, stronger than you have been

up to the present. This will be a very great consolation to me. I owe

many thanks for the resolutions that the good little Marie made

yesterday, in spite of her heart and all her feelings. Believe that I

shall never forget it, and that it cost me much before deciding to break

your ideal--but, as I told you, I prefer to be sincere. As long as my

heart was free from other passion I always considered you as the best

friend I possessed. If I was not completely happy, it was that living

without love was not to live--but you, poor little Marie, you suffered!

"You are worth a hundred times more than I, and precisely on account of

that we could not understand each other. You who are so good--too

good--permeated with the most delicate sentiments, you could not conquer

an ambitious man, for I am very ambitious.

"Whilst you dreamed of a simple, quiet life with me, you must understand

that violent passions, riches, and a luxurious life are for me

essential. In a word, our ideals are completely different, and it is a

divorce of souls which I have accomplished in leaving you. Fate made us

meet, and fate separates us. Don't have any ill-feeling towards me. My

dream now is to create for myself quite a new life made up of goodness,

of love, and above all faithfulness in a serious affection.

"I sacrifice you, it is true, but if it were otherwise, think of the

torture you would have inflicted on me. Is it not better to separate,

each of us keeping a good memory of what made our union? Think also how

my life is insupportable in this muddle now that I love truly.

"You are good, Marie; be courageous now. The sacrifice that I ask of you

is enormous, I know, but do it for love of me, and I will be eternally

obliged to you.

"You will put all your tenderness in the little Gustave, whom I shall

never forget, and above all remember that he who loves well chastises

well. Au revoir--au revoir!

"Once again pardon me, and don't suffer too much by your exile. My only

hope is that Gustave will recompense you largely for all the suffering

you have endured, so little merited during these long years.

"I remain,

"Your devoted----."

Marie was human, and when the marriage day drew near there was a fierce

flaming-up of resentment in her young heart. She thought of making a

scene at the church and spoiling the bridegroom's joy. Her brother

fanned her burning sense of wrong, and promised to back her up if she

would seek revenge. But the Marechale pleaded with her, the love of the

Crucified constrained her, and on the morning of the wedding she wrote

the following pathetic little note: "He is to be married to-day. The

wedding bells are ringing.... It is all over, dear Marechale, and I am

on my knees in my little room. All is well; the peace of Christ is in

my heart, and I have the victory." This is no romance, but a bit of

real life. Which of us would have done as little Marie did? She did not

know it, but she was worthy that morning of the ministry of angels--the

shining ones who have never sinned and never suffered.

Sometimes the Marechale would tell her audience a story to prove what

wells of love there still are in the hearts of the most abandoned.

During a three months' campaign at Lyons, resulting in one of the most

remarkable revivals in which she ever took part, she was giving a

midnight supper. Her officers had gone to the most notorious houses and

left a card containing the words: "A lady who is devoted to the cause of

women desires to speak to them on subjects which deeply interest them,

in ---- Hall, at twelve to-night. Supper, music and singing."

The city had been moved, and the rich demonstrated their sympathy with

this effort. Having had frequent experiences of the risks attending

midnight gatherings, the Marechale enlisted the interest of the police,

who on this occasion gave her all possible assistance.

Late in the evening the table was covered with damask cloths and adorned

with flowers. A supper of roast beef, vegetables, fruit and black coffee

was prepared. Towards midnight the piano began to be played, that those

who entered the hall might be welcomed with cheerful music.

Some girls came in laughing, and quickly went out again, evidently

thinking there must be some deception. They did not believe that

banquets were spread for nothing. Sometimes it was very difficult to

convince them that the thing was not a farce.

Presently a horrible old hag appeared--it would be difficult to imagine

a more ugly, repulsive woman. Coming up to the Marechale she said--

"You are the Holy Virgin. I know it. _Oui, vous etes la Sainte Vierge,

je le sais_."

The Marechale did not know what to say, so much was she taken aback.

"You are the Holy Virgin," the old woman repeated.

"Come along and have a talk with me," said the Marechale, "and take

supper. I am delighted to see you."

The woman laughed. "No, no, no, it isn't me that you want--_Ce n'est

pas moi qu'il vous faut_."

"Yes, it is you. I am happy, believe me I am so happy, to see you. It

is you whom I want. Do sit down."

At last, with great difficulty, she was persuaded to be seated. But she

stayed only a minute. The Marechale turned to speak to somebody, and

the old woman darted out of the hall. She was gone like a flash.

"We won't see _her_ again, Marechale," said one of the officers.