"Oh, what extraordinary purity in that face!"
That was the expression which gave so many of the cadets their power in the cafés and in the slums. It was what they were, far more than what they said, that did the work.
Among the new cadets there was always a great heart-searching. Were they sure of their vocation? Had they a due sense of the seriousness, the sacredness, the responsibility, the opportunity of the call to work and fight for God? If they were not right there, everything was wrong. But if they had really left the world, and come to learn to know GOD, He revealed Himself to them, and it was marvellous how rapidly they grew in that heart-knowledge which is always so much deeper than head-knowledge.
Whenever troubles and difficulties arose, the Maréchale's method was not to evade them, but to grip things at the bottom. An invitation to "come and have a cup of tea" would lead to earnest talk and prayer, by which she nipped many an evil in the bud. These "personals," as such interviews were called, were remembered ever afterwards with gratitude.
The conquest of self, the triumph of the spirit of love, was illustrated in small matters as well as in great. One day a Frenchman, François, refused to clean the boots of another cadet, who was a German.
"I clean a German's boots? Never! never!" The Maréchale quietly said:
The whole day passed, and the boots were not cleaned. The Maréchale knew what François suffered inwardly, and got him alone in the evening.
His lips remained tightly pressed. He suffered, and she suffered with him. After a moment's silence he burst into a torrent.
"We have endured too much! Think of the siege of Paris. That beast of a Bismarck! Oh! our country has suffered. Clean a German's boots? Never!"
He raved. The Maréchale was quiet and listened for a time. Then she said:
"All that may be true; but you are going to have a greater victory over the Germans than ever the Germans won over you. The triumph which they had over France was a flea-bite in comparison."
She got his ear, and talked to him of the highest things. The victory which Jesus won on Calvary over Pilate and the Priests and Judas, this must be François' victory.
"Go back to your trade unless you can win this victory. This makes an apostle of François, and nothing else. These boots are only a detail, but they have brought to light something in you that is hindering the great victory."