He answered: “I have already sent him a message through the Delegation, and he answered it not directly, but through a bitter newspaper [Illustration: SPASSKY ENTRANCE TO THE KREMLIN. _p. 99._] article, in which he said I was a most horrible creature, and that our army was an army of _puces_. How you say _puces_ in English? You know the French _puces_? Yes, that is it, an army of fleas. I did not mind what he said; I was glad. It showed that my message to him had angered him.” “When will Peace come to Russia? Will a General Election bring it?” I asked. He said: “There is no further news of a General Election, but if Lloyd George asks for an Election it will be on anti-Bolshevism, and he may win. The Capitalists, the Court, and the Military, all are behind him and Churchill.” I asked him if he were not mistaken in his estimate of the power and popularity of Winston, and the importance and influence of the Court. He got fiery. “It is an intellectual bourgeois pose to say that the King does not count. He counts very much. He is the head of the Army. He is the bourgeois figurehead, and he represents a great deal, and Churchill is backed by him.” He was so insistent, so assured, so fierce about it, that I gave up the argument. Presently, he said to me: “What does your husband think of your coming to Russia?” I replied that my husband was killed in the war. “In the capitalist-imperialist war?” I said: “In France, 1915; what other war?” “Ah, that is true,” he said. “We have had so many, the imperialist, the civil war, and the war for self-defence.” We then discussed the wonderful spirit of self-sacrifice and patriotism with which England entered upon the war in 1914, and he wanted me to read “Le Feu” and “La Clarté” of Barbusse, in which that spirit and its development is so wonderfully described. Then the telephone gave its damnable low buzzing. He looked at his watch. He had promised me fifteen minutes on the revolving stand and given me half an hour. He got down and went to the telephone. It did not matter: I had done all I could. I had verified my measurements, and they were correct, which was a relief, and so, it being 4 o’clock and I mighty hungry, I said good-bye. He was very pleased, said I had worked very quickly, called in his secretary and discussed it with her, said it was _carascho_. I asked him to give orders to have it removed to my studio, Room 31. Two soldiers arrived and carried it out. I asked Lenin for his photograph, which he sent for and signed for me.