"Pull out your watch," she said. "I believe in your watch, I believe that it keeps time, but I do not believe in its maker! ... I am naturally just as great a lover of ease and comfort as you are. The motive power—_la force motrice_—of my life, the spring upon which everything turns, is the love of Christ. You believe in me; believe in Him who has made me what I am." The Maréchale’s third new departure was perhaps the most important of all—the founding of an École Militaire, or school for cadets, somewhat similar to the Military School at Clapton, over which her sister Emma at that time presided. When Catherine first went to France, a very noted Protestant pastor said to her, "You will never get three Frenchwomen to live together in peace." But at the Training Home, Avenue Lumière 3, in the Villette, where the Maréchale lived all the year round with her officers, there were as many as forty or fifty young women—among whom, at one time, a Princess’s daughters were side by side with scullery maids—and the harmony, the love, the spirit of "never mind me," which prevailed was one of the miracles of the work in France. To the training of company after company of young cadets—French, Swiss, English, Belgian, German, Italian and Russian—the Maréchale gave a great deal of her time and strength, her pattern being ever our Lord’s own training of the Twelve. All obeyed her joyfully and without question. She realised intuitively that the highest thing in training is not discipline, but something which discipline follows as light follows the sun. That something is the spirit, the atmosphere, which men and women are brought into and which transforms them. In the École Militaire it was the selflessness of people who did not care what became of them. Where that spirit takes possession of any one, there is no need to say to him, "You shall do this or that." The law of the spirit of life makes him obedient without constraint. The spirit of the Maréchale’s leadership is somewhat expressed in Garibaldi’s call to arms often quoted by her. His followers understood his motives, realised his disinterestedness, saw that rewards and honours were nothing to the man who was seeking the Liberty of Italy. Therefore they loved him so much that they would have died for him. There was no marked difference between the Staff and the Field, and yet there was discipline, obedience, devotion such as the world has scarcely ever seen equalled.