When Baron Cederström was seeking local colour for his painting "The Maréchale in the Café,"[1] he drove down with his wife to a meeting in the Rue d'Angoulême. As they approached the hall, the Baroness caught sight of some of the faces and took fright.
[1] This painting is now in the picture gallery of Stockholm. The artist, as is well known, afterwards married Madame Patti.
"Go back, go back!" she shouted to the coachman.
The Baron tried in vain to reassure her.
"Give me my salts!" she cried, feeling as if she would faint. "I never saw such faces in my life. They are all murderers and brigands." To Catherine, who came out to welcome her, she exclaimed, "I am sure the good God won't send you to Purgatory, for you have it here!"
"You have nothing to fear," was the answer; "I am here every night." But as the Baroness was led up to the front seats, she still cast scared looks at the people she passed.
Some of the politically dangerous classes did give trouble for a time. Knives were displayed and some blood was shed. An excited sergeant of police declared one night that half the cut-throats of Paris were in that hall, and by order of the authorities it was closed. Soon, however, the meetings were again in full swing, and when Catherine's eldest brother Bramwell, her comrade in many an English campaign, paid her a flying visit three months after she left home, he was delighted with all that he saw. "The meetings," he wrote, "are held every night. The congregations vary from 150 to 400.... On Sunday, at three, I attended the testimony meeting, which is only for converts and friends. About seventy were present. Miss Booth took the centre, and gathered round her a little company. I cannot describe that meeting. When I heard those French converts singing that first hymn, 'Nearer to heaven, nearer to heaven,' I wept for joy, and during the season of prayer which followed my heart overflowed. Here, using another tongue, among a strange people, almost alone, this little band have trusted the Lord and triumphed.... Then testimonies were invited.... I wept and rejoiced, and wept again. I glorified God. Had I not heard these seventeen people speak in their own language of God's saving power in Paris during those few weeks! I require all who read this to rejoice. I believe they will. Remember how great a task it is to awaken the conscience before Christ can be offered; to convince of sin as well as of righteousness; to call to repentence as well as faith.... On the following night 300 were present.... Miss Booth stepped off the platform as she concluded her address, and came down, as so many of us have seen her come down at home, into the midst of the people. Her closing appeal seemed to go through them. Many were deeply moved. Some of those sitting at the back, who had evidently come largely for fun, quailed before one's very eyes, and seemed subdued and softened. God was working."
Later in the year the new headquarters on the Quai de Valmy were opened. Here there was a hall for 1200. No other form of religion could draw such an assembly of the lowest class of Parisians as nightly met in it. The men came in their blouses, kept their caps on their heads, and—except that they abstained from smoking, in obedience to a notice at the door—behaved with the freedom and ease of a music-hall audience. But the earnest way in which most of those present joined in the hymns proved that they were not mere spectators, and it was astonishing that many rough, unkempt, and even brutal-looking men soon learned to sing heartily without using the book.
There were a hundred converts in the first year and another five hundred in the second. Paris herself began to testify that a good work had been begun in her midst. On the way to and from the hall in the Rue d'Angoulême Catherine, who by this time had begun to be endearingly known as the Maréchale, the highest military title in France, used often to meet a priest, to whom she always said "Bon jour, mon père." One day he paused and said, "Madame la Maréchale, I want to tell you that since you began your work in this quarter the moral atmosphere of the whole place has changed. I meet the fruits everywhere, and I can tell better than you what you are doing." She felt that God sent her that word of encouragement.
One of her letters of this time indicates what kind of impression her work was making. "There is a man," she wrote, "who has attended our meetings most regularly. He listens with breathless attention, and sometimes the tears flow down his cheeks. He was visited, and sent me 70 francs for our work, with a message that he desired to see me. I saw him, and he gave me 80 more, with the words 'Sauvez la jeunesse'! ('Save the young!') I found him very dark and hopeless about himself.... The next week he again called me aside in the hall, put 50 francs into my hand, saying he hoped soon we should have a hall in every quarter of Paris. 'Save the young people!' he again said. I said 'Yes, but I want to see you saved.' 'That will come,' he said, and left the hall. Last Sunday afternoon, I noticed him weeping in a corner of the hall, as our young people were witnessing for Jesus, and, after the services, he asked if he might speak to me for two minutes; this time he handed me 60 francs, telling me to go on praying for him. He has lived a bad life and is troubled with the thought of the past."