"Oh, my son, your religion is better than mine. Forgive your old father for not forgiving you." Holding his hand, his son spoke to him of the Saviour, and sang to him some of the choruses he had learned in the Army. Father and son were a thousand miles away from Catholicism and Protestantism. They were simply in the presence of the Saviour. With words of salvation in his ears, and filial arms around him, the old Baron passed away. Himself now Baron X, he came into his fortune. However bad an eldest son has been, he cannot, by French law, be disinherited. For the next four years Baron X was an officer in the _Armée du Salut_. In Paris and Nîmes, England and Belgium he worked with ardour for the salvation of souls. He was with the Maréchale in her Brussels campaign.[1] [1] Described in chap. xiii. He married Mlle. Babut, the daughter of the well-known pastor in Nîmes. As a girl she had been brilliantly clever, but very wilful, closing her heart to all who sought to influence her for good. When the Maréchale came to Nîmes she went, like everybody else, to the meetings, taking with her girl friends whom she excited to mock and laugh. But a strange power seized her. In vain she tried to escape by ridiculing what she heard. "One evening," to use her own words, "the Maréchale—directed by God—turned her eyes full on me and said, ’Young woman, you have not the right to waste your life.’ Clear, pointed, cutting like a sword, this truth penetrated me, and with it the conviction, ’I ought to yield to God here and now.’" Three months later she was in the Training Home in Paris. The Baron X and his wife afterwards became missionaries in Madagascar. They gave themselves heart and soul to the work. When Baron X’s health began to fail, they returned home, and he continued to labour for Christ as long as he had any strength left. His end came in 1911. Pastor Babut said he had been attending death-beds for fifty years, but had never seen anything so beautiful as the Baron’s latter end. "Courage," said some one to the dying man. "Courage? I do not need it when heaven is open to me." "Do you see the Lord Jesus near you?" "But I am with Him!" "God has used you to work for Him." "All I have done counts for nothing, only the immense grace and love of God remain." *CHAPTER XII* *SO GREAT FAITH* It was mid-winter, and the ground was covered with snow. There was no little anxiety at the Villette. Forty hungry mouths had to be filled at the École Militaire, and there was nothing for dinner. The simple fact was that the cash-box was empty, and it was difficult not to have a heavy heart. But the maxim of a _Salutiste_ is "Keep believing!" God had never forsaken the Maréchale when she trusted in Him. Depression and melancholy she regarded as lack of faith. She bade her secretary call a _fiacre_. When they got in, the officer said— "You have the fare, Maréchale?" "No!"