Still further along he described one of their shore accommodations.
Night caught us yesterday where we had to take quarters in a
peasant's house which was occupied by the family and a lot of cows &
calves, also several rabbits.—[His word for fleas. Neither fleas
nor mosquitoes ever bit him—probably because of his steady use of
tobacco.]—The latter had a ball & I was the ballroom; but they
were very friendly and didn't bite.
The peasants were mighty kind and hearty & flew around & did their
best to make us comfortable. This morning I breakfasted on the
shore in the open air with two sociable dogs & a cat. Clean cloth,
napkins & table furniture, white sugar, a vast hunk of excellent
butter, good bread, first-class coffee with pure milk, fried fish
just caught. Wonderful that so much cleanliness should come out of
such a phenomenally dirty house.
An hour ago we saw the Falls of the Rhone, a prodigiously rough and
dangerous-looking place; shipped a little water, but came to no
harm. It was one of the most beautiful pieces of piloting & boat
management I ever saw. Our admiral knew his business.
We have had to run ashore for shelter every time it has rained
heretofore, but Joseph has been putting in his odd time making a
waterproof sun-bonnet for the boat, & now we sail along dry,
although we have had many heavy showers this morning.
Here follows a pencil-drawing of the boat and its new awning, and he adds: “I'm on the stern, under the shelter, and out of sight.”
The trip down the Rhone proved more valuable as an outing than as literary material. Clemens covered one hundred and seventy-four pages with his notes of it, then gave it up. Traveling alone with no one but Joseph and the Admiral (former owner of the craft) was reposeful and satisfactory, but it did not inspire literary flights. He tried to rectify the lack of companionship by introducing fictitious characters, such as Uncle Abner, Fargo, and Stavely, a young artist; also Harris, from the Tramp Abroad; but Harris was not really there this time, and Mark Twain's genius, given rather to elaboration than to construction, found it too severe a task to imagine a string of adventures without at least the customary ten per cent. of fact to build upon.
It was a day above Avignon that he had an experience worth while. They were abreast of an old castle, nearing a village, one of the huddled jumble of houses of that locality, when, glancing over his left shoulder toward the distant mountain range, he received what he referred to later as a soul-stirring shock. Pointing to the outline of the distant range he said to the courier:
“Name it. Who is it?”
The courier said, “Napoleon.”
Clemens assented. The Admiral, when questioned, also promptly agreed that the mountain outlined was none other than the reclining figure of the great commander himself. They watched and discussed the phenomenon until they reached the village. Next morning Clemens was up for a first daybreak glimpse of his discovery. Later he reported it to Mrs. Clemens:
I did so long for you and Sue yesterday morning—the most superb
sunrise—the most marvelous sunrise—& I saw it all, from the very
faintest suspicion of the coming dawn, all the way through to the
final explosion of glory. But it had an interest private to itself
& not to be found elsewhere in the world; for between me & it, in
the far-distant eastward, was a silhouetted mountain range, in which
I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most noble face upturned
to the sky, & mighty form outstretched, which I had named Napoleon
Dreaming of Universal Empire—& now this prodigious face, soft,
rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil, reposeful, lay against
that giant conflagration of ruddy and golden splendors, all rayed
like a wheel with the up-streaming & far-reaching lances of the sun.
It made one want to cry for delight, it was so supreme in its
unimaginable majesty & beauty.
He made a pencil-sketch of the Napoleon head in his note-book, and stated that the apparition could be seen opposite the castle of Beauchastel; but in later years his treacherous memory betrayed him, and, forgetting these identifying marks, he told of it as lying a few hours above Arles, and named it the “Lost Napoleon,” because those who set out to find it did not succeed. He even wrote an article upon the subject, in which he urged tourists to take steamer from Arles and make a short trip upstream, keeping watch on the right-hand bank, with the purpose of rediscovering the natural wonder. Fortunately this sketch was not published. It would have been set down as a practical joke by disappointed travelers. One of Mark Twain's friends, Mr. Theodore Stanton, made a persistent effort to find the Napoleon, but with the wrong directions naturally failed.