THE VENERABLE DON BOSCO
be bad. To save society, then, youth must be protected. Do you know where the salvation of society is? In your pockets. These children, whom the patronage and workshops receive, want your help and await your alms. If you repulse them and abandon them to communist theories, they will come to demand from you one day the money you now refuse; not with hat in hand, but knife at the throat; perhaps with your money they will demand your life."
His arrival in Paris was greeted with almost incredible enthusiasm. "A thaumaturgus, a saint, the Italian St. Vincent of Paul is in our city!" was the cry everywhere. For a fortnight he was "the lion of the day." He preached many sermons in Paris, commencing in the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires. Sceptics were moved, and numerous remarkable conversions followed in the great city. Crowds of the faithful congregated wherever he was expected, and waited patiently long hours in order to see him and get "the blessing of a saint."
An eye-witness writes: "I have never seen him in his orphanages, among the priests he educated; but I have seen him among the multitude, who knelt at his feet, kissed his hands, bent for his blessing; but what charmed me most was the humility and modesty of the object of this demonstration, who accepted none of it as his own, but referred all to God and the Blessed Virgin. He, a peasant's son, remained so, and sought no other prestige. He attributed all that he accomplished
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