The first letter Catherine received from her father after she set foot in France breathed tender affection and ardent hope. "Oh, my heart does yearn over you! How could you fear for a single moment that you would be any less near and dear to me on account of your brave going forth to a land of strangers to help me in the great purpose and struggle of my life? My darling, you are nearer and dearer than ever.... France is hanging on you to an extent fearful to contemplate, and you must regard your health, seeing that we cannot go on without you. We shall anxiously await information as to when you make a start. Everybody who has heard you and knows you feels the fullest confidence in the result. Nevertheless I shall be glad for you to get to work, seeing that I know you won’t be easy in your mind until you have seen a few French sinners smashed up at the penitent form." With her own hand Catherine raised the flag at Rue d’Angoulême 66, in Belleville. Here was a hall for six hundred, situated in a court approached by a narrow street. The bulk of the audience that gathered there night after night were of the artisan class. Some were young men of a lower type, and from these came what disturbance there was. The French sense of humour is keen, and there were many lively sallies at the expense of the speakers and singers on the platform. Every false accent, every wrong idiom, every unexpected utterance or gesture was received with an outburst of laughter. But the mirth was superficial, and the expression on the faces of the tired men, harassed women, and pale children was one of settled melancholy. Catherine instinctively felt that what they needed was a gospel of joy; certainly not the preaching of hell, for did they not live in hell? These toiling sisters and brothers were the multitudes on whom Jesus had compassion. Meetings were held night after night, and for six months the Capitaine was never absent except on Saturdays. Those were days of fight, and she fought, to use her own phrase, like a tiger. She had to fight first her own heart. She knew her capacity, and God had done great things through her in England. The change from an audience of five thousand spellbound hearers in the circus of Leeds to a handful of gibing _ouvriers_ in the Belleville quarter of Paris was indeed a clashing antithesis. A fortnight passed without a single penitent, and Catherine was all the time so ill that it was doubtful if she would be able to remain in the field. That fortnight was probably one of the supreme trials of her faith. The work appeared so hopeless! There was nothing to see. But for the Capitaine faith meant _going on_. It meant saying to her heart, "You may suffer, you may bleed, you may break, but you shall go on." She went on, believing, praying, fighting, and at last the tide of battle turned.