Later in the year the new headquarters on the Quai de Valmy were opened. Here there was a hall for 1200. No other form of religion could draw such an assembly of the lowest class of Parisians as nightly met in it. The men came in their blouses, kept their caps on their heads, and—except that they abstained from smoking, in obedience to a notice at the door—behaved with the freedom and ease of a music-hall audience. But the earnest way in which most of those present joined in the hymns proved that they were not mere spectators, and it was astonishing that many rough, unkempt, and even brutal-looking men soon learned to sing heartily without using the book. There were a hundred converts in the first year and another five hundred in the second. Paris herself began to testify that a good work had been begun in her midst. On the way to and from the hall in the Rue d’Angoulême Catherine, who by this time had begun to be endearingly known as the Maréchale, the highest military title in France, used often to meet a priest, to whom she always said "Bon jour, mon père." One day he paused and said, "Madame la Maréchale, I want to tell you that since you began your work in this quarter the moral atmosphere of the whole place has changed. I meet the fruits everywhere, and I can tell better than you what you are doing." She felt that God sent her that word of encouragement. One of her letters of this time indicates what kind of impression her work was making. "There is a man," she wrote, "who has attended our meetings most regularly. He listens with breathless attention, and sometimes the tears flow down his cheeks. He was visited, and sent me 70 francs for our work, with a message that he desired to see me. I saw him, and he gave me 80 more, with the words ’_Sauvez la jeunesse_’! (’Save the young!’) I found him very dark and hopeless about himself.... The next week he again called me aside in the hall, put 50 francs into my hand, saying he hoped soon we should have a hall in every quarter of Paris. ’Save the young people!’ he again said. I said ’Yes, but I want to see you saved.’ ’That will come,’ he said, and left the hall. Last Sunday afternoon, I noticed him weeping in a corner of the hall, as our young people were witnessing for Jesus, and, after the services, he asked if he might speak to me for two minutes; this time he handed me 60 francs, telling me to go on praying for him. He has lived a bad life and is troubled with the thought of the past."