Tributes to "the Maréchale under fire" were extorted from all the reporters. After two or three meetings the atmosphere was changing and the tide of battle turning, when tidings came from Paris, that Augustine, the Maréchale’s little son of two summers, was alarmingly ill. Then came an indescribable mental conflict, which ended in her deciding to remain at least another night and hope for better news in the morning. She called her officers for prayer, and that night spoke with a power and tenderness which held the vast audience as with a spell; after which she had Havre for six weeks in the hollow of her hand. Next morning she received a reassuring wire from home, and, sitting alone on the beach, she wrote a hymn that gives perfect expression to the thought of the _Greater Love_—a hymn that has endeared itself in France as much to Catholics as to Protestants. It begins: Qui quitte famille et terre Pour mon Nom, pour suivre mes pas; Qui quitte enfants, père ou mère, Reçoit le centuple ici-bas. When this hymn was sung in the "Lyre Havraise" a night or two afterwards by one of the Maréchale’s young comrades, Mme. Jeanmonod, who had a beautiful soprano voice, it was received with a burst of sympathetic applause, and had to be sung over and over again, till the audience knew it. Then there was a great harvest of souls to reap. A letter written at the time gives an idea of the intensity of spirit with which the leader threw herself into the work. "Meeting superb! Nothing of its kind since the days of Geneva and Nîmes, and even better in a sense than that, as the infidels rush to hear me. Perfect order and people pleading to get in. In these first audiences it has been too risky and excitable to allow any to speak but me. They applaud everything, that is, when I have finished speaking, and I never felt more free and regardless of man’s opinion. I am stronger with the rough element alone in my weakness, so much stronger as I throw myself on them. Yes, I am filled with the life and power of God for this town. This hour may never come again. My soul is on the full stretch.... Do you know what the ’Centuple’ is for me? That my children shall become apostles! Oh, I claim that of God, and do you know there is an assurance in my heart." In addition to the nightly crowds at the Casino, the Maréchale held afternoon meetings for women only, at which she spoke on such subjects as "The Role of Woman," "The Mother of Jesus," "The White Robe." Nothing impressed Havre more than the midnight suppers she gave to the _filles perdues_ of the town, not a few of whom were constrained to abandon the life of sin. And so generous were the rich citizens in their offerings that at the close of the campaign the Maréchale was at length able to realise one of her cherished ideas—the foundation of a Rescue Home in Paris.