She had always had a poet's sensitive ear for earth's thousand voices of praise, and, sitting in a garden on a spring morning, she wrote: "The past, whoever was right or wrong, shall be buried. Let the dead bury their dead. Leave it, and this beautiful spring-tide let us begin again. The crocuses and snowdrops in this lovely garden all say, 'New Resurrection life!'"
Her own children's voices called her back into the thick of the old spiritual battle. "Now for the children," she wrote; "they must all see some salvation work, and they will feel the glow of the heavenly fire. It will warm them, and say something far more than all the Bible lessons in the world." Her eldest daughters, at that time girls of sixteen and fifteen, but with a wisdom far beyond their years, literally pushed her into the war, and if ever she was unable to go they buckled on their armour and took her place. "Mother writes me," says Victoria in her journal, "that Evangeline held a beautiful meeting on Sunday because she herself was too ill to go. Poor mother, it is difficult for her to keep up her courage." This diarist of fifteen thus philosophises on the meaning of her mother's sorrow. "Everybody can understand why God lets people of the world, the infidels, the self-seekers, the indifferent, suffer. It is to bring them to Himself through disappointments in the world, in themselves, and in others. But why He allows His children that love Him, those whose greatest wish is to serve Him—why He allows them to suffer is a mystery. Perhaps it is to bring them into still closer communion with Himself, so that they may become one with Him—His, body, soul and spirit, without reserve."
The Maréchale's friends helped to bring her back to her predestined work of soul-winning.
During a time of awful silence, in which she never received a call and rarely a letter, she had not courage to visit any of her old comrades in Paris. Once, in her great sorrow, she wanted to get away to some sympathising friend and open her heart. At first she could think of no one, but suddenly she remembered a humble working woman, and, taking the train to Paris, she wearily climbed to the fifth story of a house in the Villette, sat down in this woman's little room, and burst into a flood of tears. Her friend tried to comfort her and, not quite understanding this passionate grief, made her lie down in her own bed while she prepared for her a delicious little French meal.
Twenty years before, on a dark winter night, the Maréchale was passing along the Seine embankment on the way to her place of meeting on the Quai de Valmy. She noticed a girl gazing at the dark, cold waters, and a voice told her that she was meditating suicide. Touching her arm she said—
"Don't look at those black, cruel waters. Come with me and have a nice cup of coffee. You seem to be in trouble."
The girl, whose face was dark and sullen, looked at her suspiciously, and did not speak. The Maréchale gently pleaded with her to come and hear a lady sing.
"She sings beautifully, and you will find light and warmth and comfort, and you will have a good cup of coffee. Do come with me."
The girl at length consented and came. She heard the Maréchale herself sing. She sat right through the service without opening her lips and with a hard look on her face. At the end the Maréchale went down beside her, asked if she had enjoyed the meeting, and said a word to her about the goodness of God. At the mention of the name of God, the girl burst into passionate speech.
"God! Don't talk to me of God! I hate Him. What has He done for me? Why did He take my mother? He doesn't care for me. If He did He would not have let me be born in prison. What have I done to deserve such a life as this? It isn't my fault."