Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/30

 been installed. A Grand Duke was waiting in the antechamber. The staff of the former régime was employed still there to show in the visitors. But where Soukhomlinoff, now in Peter and Paul, had lived, we found to-day with the new Minister, Madame Breschkowska, the grandmother of the Revolution, this wonderful old woman, who at eighty years of age, twenty years of which were spent in Siberia, had still the physical strength and moral courage to traverse this immense Russia, preaching the Revolution and inspiring others with the burning fire of her own passion.

When she heard that we were Belgians, and that we came as representatives of Belgian labour, she came towards us and embraced us in a maternal fashion.

We went away, moved and comforted by this interview. The ice was broken. We were really in touch with each other. We had felt the heart of the Russian Revolution beating in unison with our own, and during the three weeks that we spent in Petrograd this impression was deepened daily.