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incident ten years later, he could not remember the name of the
village, Beauchastel, from which the great figure could be seen;
also, that he had made a record of the place.
But he was by this time more certain than ever that his discovery
was a remarkable one, which, if known, would become one of the great
natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls. Theodore Stanton was
visiting him at the time, and Clemens urged him, on his return to
France, to make an excursion to the Rhone and locate the Lost
Napoleon, as he now called it. But Clemens remembered the wonder as
being somewhere between Arles and Avignon, instead of about a
hundred miles above the last-named town. Stanton naturally failed
to find it, and it remained for the writer of these notes, motoring
up the Rhone one September day, exactly twenty-two years after the
first discovery, to re-locate the vast reclining figure of the first
consul of France, "dreaming of Universal Empire." The re-discovery
was not difficult--with Mark Twain's memoranda as a guide--and it
was worth while. Perhaps the Lost Napoleon is not so important a
natural wonder as Mark Twain believed, but it is a striking picture,
and on a clear day the calm blue face outlined against the sky will
long hold the traveler's attention.
*
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