pardons. That one there, Old
Times on the Mississippi, is the best you ever wrote."

The note-book records only one social event following the Emperor's
dinner--a dinner with the secretary of the legation. The note says:

At the Emperor's dinner black cravats were ordered. Tonight I went in a
black cravat and everybody else wore white ones. Just my luck.

The Berlin activities came to an end then. He was still physically far
from robust, and his doctors peremptorily ordered him to stay indoors or
to go to a warmer climate. This was March 1st. Clemens and his wife
took Joseph Very, and, leaving the others for the time in Berlin, set out
for Mentone, in the south of France.

CLXXX

MANY WANDERINGS

Mentone was warm and quiet, and Clemens worked when his arm permitted. He
was alone there with Mrs. Clemens, and they wandered about a good deal,
idling and picture-making, enjoying a sort of belated honeymoon. Clemens
wrote to Susy:

Joseph is gone to Nice to educate himself in kodaking--and to get the
pictures mounted which mama thinks she took here; but I noticed she
didn't take the plug out, as a rule. When she did she took nine pictures
on top of each other--composites.

They remained a month in Mentone, then went over to Pisa, and sent Joseph
to bring the rest of the party to Rome. In Rome they spent another
month--a period of sight-seeing, enjoyable, but to Clemens pretty
profitless.

"I do not expect to be able to write any literature this year," he said
in a letter to Hall near the end of April. "The moment I take up my pen
my rheumatism returns."

Still he struggled along and managed to pile up a good deal of copy in
the course of weeks. From Rome to Florence, at the end of April, and so
pleasing was the prospect, and so salubrious the air of that ancient
city, that they resolved to engage residence there for the next winter.
They inspected accommodations of various kinds, and finally, through
Prof. Willard Fiske, were directed to the Villa Viviani, near Settignano,
on a hill to the eastward of Florence, with vineyard and olive-grove
sloping away to the city lying in a haze-a vision of beauty and peace.
They closed the arrangement for Viviani, and about the middle of May went
up to Venice for a fortnight of sight-seeing--a break in the travel back
to Germany. William Gedney Bunce, the Hartford artist, was in Venice,
and Sarah Orne Jewett and other home friends.

From Venice, by way of Lake Como an