Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910
One afternoon, about fifteen miles below the city of Valence, he made a
discovery. Dreamily observing the eastward horizon, he noticed that a
distant blue mountain presented a striking profile outline of Napoleon
Bonaparte. It seemed really a great natural wonder, and he stopped that
night at the village just below, Beauchastel, a hoary huddle of houses
with the roofs all run together, and took a room at the little hotel,
with a window looking to the eastward, from which, next morning, he saw
the profile of the great stone face, wonderfully outlined against the
sunrise. He was excited over his discovery, and made a descriptive note
of it and an outline sketch. Then, drifting farther down the river, he
characteristically forgot all about it and did not remember it again for
ten years, by which time he had forgotten the point on the river where
the Napoleon could be seen, forgotten even that he had made a note and
sketch giving full details. He wished the Napoleon to be found again,
believing, as he declared, that it would become one of the natural
wonders of the world. To travelers going to France he attempted to
describe it, and some of these tried to find it; but, as he located it
too far down the Rhone, no one reported success, and in time he spoke of
his discovery as the "Lost Napoleon." It was not until after Mark
Twain's death that it was rediscovered, and then by the writer of this
memoir, who, having Mark Twain's note-book,[11] with its exact memoranda,
on another September day, motoring up the Rhone, located the blue profile
of the reclining Napoleon opposite the gray village of Beauchastel. It
is a really remarkable effigy, and deserves to be visited.
Clemens finished his trip at Arles--a beautiful trip from beginning to
end, but without literary result. When he undertook to write of it, he
found that it lacked incident, and, what was worse, it lacked humor. To
undertake to create both was too much. After a few chapters he put the
manuscript aside, unfinished, and so it remains to this day.
The Clemens family spent the winter in Berlin, a gay winter, with Mark
Twain as one of the distinguished figures of the German capital. He was
received everywhere and made much of. Once a small, choice dinner was
given him by Kaiser William II., and, later, a breakfast by the Empress.
His books were great favorites in the German royal family. The Kaiser
particularly enjoyed the "Mississippi" book, while the essay on "The
Awful German Language," in the "Tramp Abroad," he pronounced one of the
finest pieces of humor ever written. Mark Twain's books were favorites,
in fact, throughout Germany. The door-man in his hotel had them all in
his little room, and, discovering one day that their guest, Samuel L.
Clemens, and Mark Twain were one, he nearly exploded with excitement.
Dragging the author to his small room, he pointed to the shelf:
"There," he said, "you wrote them! I've found it out. Ach! I did not
know it before, and I ask a million pardons."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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