The Clemens' residence in Paris, France from November 16, 1894 to April 29, 1895, when they departed Europe to begin his world tour.

"Located in the seventh arrondissement near the Eiffel Tower, which opened in 1889, the four-bedroom furnished house was large by Paris standards.  It was also on the left bank, by then already a haven for artists and intellectuals;  in the past, the Clemenses had chosen to live on the more socially conventional right bank.  Starting in mid-November, they rented the house from an acquaintance, Marcus Pomeroy, a popular journalist and real estate promoter, who let them have it for the equivalent of about $225 a month.  The catch was that the lease expired on May 1."  [Mark Twain and France, p176]

November 16 , 1894 Friday –

 — our quarters for the winter. It is not a flat, but a small house by itself, & it seems a comfortable & homelike place. Home like, for the reason that an American furnished it; consequently it is not a museum of infernal colors, tasteless, “decorations” & odious furniture.

It was a lovely house; large, rambling, quaint, charmingly furnished and decorated, built upon no particular plan, delightfully uncertain and full of surprises. You were always getting lost in it, and finding nooks and corners which you did not know were there and whose presence you had not suspected before. It was built by a rich French artist, and he had also furnished it and decorated it himself. The studio was coziness itself. With us it served as a drawing-room, sitting-room, living-room, dancing-room — we used it for everything. We couldn’t get enough of it. It is odd that it should have been so cozy, for it was 40 feet long, 40 feet high, and 30 feet wide, with a vast fireplace on each side, in the middle, and a musicians’ gallery at one end.

December 9, 1894 Sunday – Sam wrote to H.H. Rogers

and a change of mind about the rental house:

I am feeling in better shape yesterday and to-day….If this family were in a hotel, now, or in a flat, I would take the next ship for New York, for I see you believe that would be well. But here we are, in this private little house, with two stories, eight staircases, no end of cells and passages, and little or no room. It was built by an idiot, I think. There is but one bedroom on our floor. All other bedrooms are far away, and one couldn’t make anybody hear if one were in trouble. We have French servants whom we know little or nothing about. The man-servant is sometimes impudent — in manner, not words — and I guess he’ll have to go, before long, though he is alert and capable, and another stranger admitted.