An old general was once asked by a friend how it was that, after so many years spent in the camp, he had come to be so frequent a communicant, receiving several times a week. "My friend," answered the old soldier, "the strangest part of it is, that my change of life was brought about before I ever listened to the word of a priest, and before I had set my foot in a church. After my campaigns, God bestowed on me a pious wife, whose faith I respected, though I did not share it. Before I married her she was a member of all the pious confraternities of her parish, and she never failed to add to her signature, Child of Mary. She never took it upon herself to lecture me about God, but I could read her thoughts in her countenance. When she prayed, every morning and night, her countenance beamed with faith and charity; when she returned from the church, where she had received, with a calmness, a sweetness and a patience, which had in them something of the serenity of heaven, she seemed an angel. When she dressed my wounds I found her like a Sister of Charity.

"Suddenly, I myself was taken with the desire to love the God whom my wife loved so well, and who inspired her with those virtues which formed the joy of my life. One day I, who hitherto was without faith, who was such a complete stranger to the practices of religion, so far from the Sacraments, said to her: 'Take me to your confessor.'

"Through the ministry of this man of God, and by the divine grace, I have become what I am, and what I rejoice to be."