ote:

"It's too delicious, floating with the swift current under the awning
these superb, sunshiny days, in peace and quietness. Some of the
curious old historical towns strangely persuade me, but it's so
lovely afloat that I don't stop, but view them from the outside and
sail on. . . I want to do all the rivers of Europe in an open boat
in summer weather."

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 Berli