"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 Trône 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 roué in the universe.
The Maréchale's second original idea was to begin a series of Conférences (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 Maréchale'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 bête 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 Conférences 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 Maréchale's Conférences 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 Maréchale came to hold her first Conférence, 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 Conférence 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."