Slowly she walked onto the platform, not raising her eyes from the ground. The audience seemed petrified by the strange apparition. After a moment of deathly silence, her clear, penetrating voice sounded through the hall.
"'He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief ... and we esteemed Him not. Nous n'en avons fait aucun cas.'
"If I wear mourning to-night, it is the better to express the feelings which are in the depths of my heart. Your people, who are capable of great things, are going to their ruin. On all hands there are nameless miseries, despairing cries of women and children without defence and exposed to shame and the most frightful misery, and why? Because you have made Him—Christ—of no account. I mourn your sins, the sins of your country; the drunkenness, the debauchery, the selfishness, the wrongs which are seen everywhere; your rejection of the Christ of God, the Saviour of the world. This fills me with sorrow, and this, unless it is forsaken, will bring upon you the judgments of God."
Thus she unburdened her soul, and thus began not a three weeks' but a two months' campaign, which from the first moment—in so strange contrast to the tumultuous openings at Havre and Rouen—was marked by a beautiful reverence and solemnity. The services of the police were never required during the whole time. Four or five evening meetings were held every week, besides afternoon gatherings, salon meetings, and midnight suppers. All Brussels was moved. An eminent statesman said to the Maréchale, "Everybody has been ridiculed here except you. Ridicule kills everything; you have killed ridicule."
In the full tide of the mission she wrote to her father: "Most marvellously is God working here in Brussels. Last night I had the concert-hall crowded and a great number were turned back at the door. The silence, the attention is unbroken, and there is conviction among all kind of persons. Worldly and Catholic papers speak beautifully of us. Four journals have given leading articles to me. Praise God, it is all His work! This morning I had a conversation with a senator who is at the head of the party of progress here, and he says that the movement is the most remarkable "the city has seen for a hundred years and that the effects are profound and astonishing." Another senator has sent me £20. I feel more than ever now I ought to continue and push the battle. We shall be able to do something extraordinary and put Belgium on a new footing."
The first senator referred to in the letter was M. le Jeune, who said to the Maréchale—
"The bar, the artist world, society, Catholic and Protestant—they have all come to hear you. You are universal, Madame."
"Yes," she answered, "the Christ is universal."
During these two months she had daily interviews with men and women crushed under the burden of all kinds of sin—a burden that weighed so heavily on her own spirit that sometimes, instead of delivering an address, she could only fall on her knees and cry to God to forgive all the sins that come from the heart of man—murders, adulteries, thefts, uncleanness, lies, blasphemies—all of which had been confessed to her.
It was a time of wonderful spiritual blessing for all her comrades, who, like her, literally "lived for the people." One of them said, "We have grown as much with you in these weeks as in twenty years."