It was above Rochemaure—I did not identify the exact point—that an opportunity came which very likely I shall never have again. On a bluff high above an ancient village, so old and curious that it did not belong to reality at all, there was a great château, not a ruin—at least, not a tumbled ruin, though time-beaten and gray—but a good complete château, and across its mossy lintel a stained and battered wooden sign with the legend, "A Louer"—that is, "To Let."
I stopped the car. This, I said, was our opportunity. Nothing could be better than that ancient and lofty perch overlooking the valley of the Rhone. The "To Let" sign had been there certainly a hundred years, so the price would be reasonable. We could get it for a song; we would inherit its traditions, its secret passages, its donjons, its ghosts, its— I paused a moment, expecting enthusiasm, even eagerness, on the part of the family. Strange as it may seem, there wasn't a particle of either. I went over those things again, and added new and fascinating attractions. I said we would adopt the coat of arms of that old family, hyphenate its name with ours, and so in that cheap and easy fashion achieve a nobility which the original owner had probably shed blood to attain.
It was no use. The family looked up the hill with an interest that was almost clammy. Narcissa asked, "How would you get the car up there?" The Joy said, "It would be a good place for bad dreams." The head of the expedition remarked, as if dismissing the most trivial item of the journey, that we'd better be going on or we should be late getting into Valence. So, after dreaming all my life of living in a castle, I had to give it up in that brief, incidental way.
Chapter XII
THE LOST NAPOLEON
Now, it is just here that we reach the special reason which had kept us where we had a clear view of the eastward mountains, and particularly to the westward bank of the Rhone, where there was supposed to be a certain tiny village, one Beauchastel—a village set down on none of our maps, yet which was to serve as an important identifying mark. The reason had its beginning exactly twenty-two years before; that is to say, in September, 1891. Mark Twain was in Europe that year, seeking health and literary material, and toward the end of the summer—he was then at Ouchy, Switzerland—he decided to make a floating trip down the river Rhone. He found he could start from Lake Bourget in France, and, by paddling through a canal, reach the strong Rhone current, which would carry him seaward. Joseph Very, his favorite guide (mentioned in A Tramp Abroad), went over to Lake Bourget and bought a safe, flat-bottomed boat, retaining its former owner as pilot, and with these accessories Mark Twain made one of the most peaceful and delightful excursions of his life. Indeed, he enjoyed it so much and so lazily that after the first few days he gave up making extended notes and surrendered himself entirely to the languorous fascination of drifting idly through the dreamland of southern France. On the whole, it was an eventless excursion, with one exception—a startling exception, as he believed.
One afternoon, when they had been drifting several days, he sighted a little village not far ahead, on the west bank, an ancient "jumble of houses," with a castle, one of the many along that shore. It looked interesting and he suggested that they rest there for the night. Then, chancing to glance over his shoulder toward the eastward mountains, he received a sudden surprise—a "soul-stirring shock," as he termed it later. The big blue eastward mountain was no longer a mere mountain, but a gigantic portrait in stone of one of his heroes. Eagerly turning to Joseph Very and pointing to the huge effigy, he asked him to name it. The courier said, "Napoleon." The boatman also said, "Napoleon." It seemed to them, indeed, almost uncanny, this lifelike, reclining figure of the conqueror, resting after battle, or, as Mark Twain put it, "dreaming of universal empire." They discussed it in awed voices, as one of the natural wonders of the world, which perhaps they had been the first to discover. They landed at the village, Beauchastel, and next morning Mark Twain, up early, watched the sun rise from behind the great stone face of his discovery. He made a pencil sketch in his notebook, and recorded the fact that the figure was to be seen from Beauchastel. That morning, drifting farther down the Rhone, they watched it until the human outlines changed.
Mark Twain's Rhone trip was continued as far as Arles, where the current slackened. He said that some one would have to row if they went on, which would mean work, and that he was averse to work, even in another person. He gave the boat to its former owner, took Joseph, and rejoined the family in Switzerland.
Events thronged into Mark Twain's life: gay winters, summers of travel, heavy literary work, business cares and failures, a trip around the world, bereavement. Amid such a tumult the brief and quiet Rhone trip was seldom even remembered.