THE BOYS' LIFE OF MARK TWAIN
France he attempted to describe it, and some of these tried to find it; but, as he located it too far down the Rhône, 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,[1] with its exact memoranda, on another September day, motoring up the Rhône, 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
- ↑ At Mark Twain's death his various literary effects passed into the hands of his biographer and literary executor, the present writer.
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