[1] The Review of the Churches, Feb. 1894.
In 1896, however, her career in France came to an end. She received the command to go and devote herself to the work of the Army in Holland, and loyally prepared to obey.
Catholics and Protestants alike were dismayed at the news. One of her dearest friends, the Catholic scholar M. Lassaire, whose exquisite translation of the four Gospels had the honour of being put upon the Index Expurgatorius, came to her and said—
"You ought not to leave us. God has given you the ear of the nation as it is given only once in a hundred years."
"But I am commanded."
"If the angel Gabriel descended from heaven and bade you go, you ought not to leave France!"
Théodore Monod, whose own family had been greatly blessed through the Maréchale, deeply sympathised with her, and grieved over her departure almost as if she had been his own daughter, but tried to comfort her by saying, "You leave us your hymns!"
The day on which the Maréchale left France was one of the two or three dark days of her life. She felt somewhat like the young Scottish Queen who said as she gazed at the receding shores of Calais—
"Adieu! mon charmant pays de France,
Adieu! te quitter c'est mourir."
And yet she believed in her heart that God would work out His gracious purpose, which no circumstances can ever alter.