With the exception of a very occasional wooden-shod peasant, nobody was abroad in this bitter weather--I mean of our sex. But all weathers are alike to the women in these continental countries. To them and the other animals life is serious; nothing interrupts their slavery. Three of them were washing clothes in the river under the window when we arrived, and they continued at it as long as there was light to work by. One was apparently thirty; another--the mother?--above fifty; the third--grandmother?--so old and worn and gray she could have passed for eighty. They had no waterproofs or rubbers, of course; over their heads and shoulders they wore gunny sacks--simply conductors for rivers of water; some of the volume reached ground, the rest soaked in on the way. At last a vigorous fellow of thirty-five arrived, dry and comfortable, smoking his pipe under his big umbrella in an open donkey cart--husband, son, and grandson of those women? He stood up in the cart, sheltering himself, and began to superintend, issuing his orders in a masterly tone of command, and showing temper when they were not obeyed swiftly enough. Without complaint or murmur the drowned women patiently carried out the orders, lifting the immense baskets of soaked clothing into the cart and stowing them to the man’s satisfaction. The cart being full now, he descended, with his umbrella, entered the tavern, and the women went drooping homeward in the wake of the cart, and soon were blended with the deluge and lost to sight. We would tar and feather that fellow in America, and ride him on a rail. When we came down into the public room he had his bottle of wine and plate of food on a bare table black with grease, and was chomping like a horse. He had the little religious paper which is in everybody’s hands on the Rhône borders, and was enlightening himself with the histories of French saints who used to flee to the desert in the Middle Ages to escape the contamination of women. Wednesday.--After breakfast, got under way. Still storming as hard as ever. The whole land looks defeated and discouraged. And very lonely; here and there a woman in the fields. They merely accent the loneliness. NOTE.--The record ends here. Luxurious enjoyment of the excursion rendered the traveler indifferent to his notes. The drift continued to Arles, whence Mark Twain returned to Geneva and Ouchy by rail. Ten years later he set down another picture of this happy journey--“The Lost Napoleon”--which follows.--A. B. P. ----- Footnote 3: Of Hartford, Connecticut. Footnote 4: _Note, 1904._ Hopkinson Smith, now a distinguished man in literature, art, and architecture. S. L. C. THE LOST NAPOLEON