In the autumn of 1883 the Maréchale suddenly leapt into fame as a latter-day Portia, brilliantly and successfully pleading in a Swiss law-court, before the eyes of Europe, the sacred cause of civil and religious liberty. The land of Tell, the oldest of modern republics, has always been regarded as a shrine of freedom. It has shown itself hospitable to all kinds of ideas, even the newest, the strangest, the most anti-Christian, the most anti-social. There is a natural affinity between free England and free Switzerland.
"Two Voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice; They were thy chosen music, Liberty."
In the "Treaty of Friendship" between Great Britain and Switzerland, drawn up in 1855, it was agreed that "the subjects and citizens of either of the two contracting parties shall, provided they conform to the laws of the country, be at liberty, with their families, to enter, establish themselves, reside and remain in any part of the territories of the other." Yet the presence of a few English evangelists in Switzerland evoked a storm of persecution in which the first principles of religious liberty were as much violated as ever they had been in the days of the Huguenots.
When the Maréchale and some comrades accepted an urgent invitation to Switzerland, she little thought that she would be the heroine of an historical trial. She went to preach the gospel. She observed the laws of the land, and respected the religious susceptibilities of its people. When she entered Geneva, she published only one poster, and that after it had been duly _visé_; she allowed no processions, banners or brass bands in the streets. Her only crime was that she sought to gain the ears of those who never entered a place of worship, and that she marvellously succeeded.
If good order was not always maintained at her meetings, it was not her fault, but that of the authorities who refused to do their duty. History repeats itself. As in ancient Thessalonica during the visit of St. Paul, so in modern Geneva, some citizens, "moved with jealousy, took unto themselves certain vile fellows of the rabble, and gathering a crowd set the city on an uproar." The ringleaders of the disturbance were paid by noted traffickers in vice, who were themselves often seen in the meetings inciting the audience to riot. One of the first converts, a student, confessed that he had got twenty francs a night, and as much whisky as he could drink, to make a row.