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."