That night, Louis Martin and his daughters, Léonie, Céline and Thérèse, attended Midnight Mass at the cathedral in Lisieux— "but there was very little heart left in them. On 1 December, Léonie, covered in eczema and hiding her hair under a short mantilla, had returned to "Les Buissonnets" after just seven weeks of the Poor Clares regime in Alençon", and her sisters were helping her get over her sense of failure and humiliation. Back at "Les Buissonnets" as every year, Thérèse "as was the custom for French children, had left her shoes on the hearth, empty in anticipation of gifts, not from Father Christmas but from the Child Jesus, who was imagined to travel through the air bearing toys and cakes." While she and Céline were going up the stairs she heard her father, "perhaps exhausted by the hour, or this reminder of the relentless emotional demands of his weepy youngest daughter", say with some irritation "Therese is far too old for this now. Fortunately this will be the last year!" Therese had begun to cry and Céline advised her not to go back downstairs immediately. Then, suddenly, Therese pulled herself together and wiped her tears. She ran down the stairs, knelt by the fireplace and unwrapped her surprises as jubilantly as ever. In her account, nine years later, of 1895 : "In an instant Jesus, content with my good will, accomplished the work I had not been able to do in ten years." After nine sad years she had "recovered the strength of soul she had lost" when her mother died and, she said, "she was to retain it forever". She discovered the joy in self-forgetfulness and added, "I felt, in a word, charity enter my heart, the need to forget myself to make others happy—Since this blessed night I was not defeated in any battle, but instead I went from victory to victory and began, so to speak, "to run a giant's course".Psalms