September 22 Tuesday – On the Rhone River below Villebois at Noon, Sam wrote again to Livy:

Good morning, sweetheart. Night caught us yesterday where we had to take quarters in a peasant’s house which was occupied by the family & a lot of cows & calves — also several rabbits. — [His word for fleas.] — The latter had a ball, & I was the ball-room; but they were very friendly & didn’t bite.

The peasants were mighty kind & hearty, & flew around & did their best to make us comfortable. This morning I breakfasted on the shore in the open air with two sociable dogs & a cat. Clean cloth, napkin & table furniture, white sugar, a vast hunk of excellent butter, good bread, first class coffee with pure milk, fried fish just caught. Wonderful that so much cleanliness should come out of such a phenomenally dirty house.

An hour ago we saw the Falls of the Rhone, a prodigiously rough & dangerous looking place; shipped a little water but came to no harm. It was one of the most beautiful pieces of piloting & boat-management I ever saw. Our admiral knew his business.

We have had to run ashore for shelter every time it has rained heretofore, but Joseph has been putting in his odd time making a water-proof sun-bonnet for the boat, & now we sail along dry although we had many heavy showers this morning. [Paine left out the next sentence]

I’m on the stern seat under shelter & out of sight.

With a word of love to you all & particularly you,

SAML [MTLP 2: 551; MTP].

Note: Sam’s “&”s have been restored; Paine usually replaced them with “and”s.

Meanwhile, in Ouchy, Livy wrote to Sam, sending the letter to Lyon, France:

Youth darling: I received this morning a note from Fuller & in which they copied a note from Mr Pr[ächtel] acknowledging the rec’t of the 1000. So I think we are all safe and that our not hearing from him is simply some slip. Now I shall have the trunks sent directly to him. I am sure I am safe to do so. Sue & Susy have gone to Geneva today & I did not go for the reasons I was too lazy and then we thought it was not quite right for Sue and I to go together and leave the children here alone. Clara & Jean have gone for a walk. It is windy and cool, a pleasant time for walking. I enjoy very much having the care of the children. It is pleasant to be without a maid for a little while [The Twainian Jan-Feb 1977 p.1]. The money acknowledged was for their housing in Berlin.

Sam’s log discloses that he got out of the boat and walked until the “Admiral” guided the boat through a canal to the left of the Falls:

I did not see how our flimsy ark could live through such a place. If we were wrecked, swimming could not save us; the packed multitude of tall humps of water meant a bristling chaos of big rocks underneath, and the first rock we hit would break our bones. If I had been fortified with ignorance I might have wanted to stay in the boat and see the fun; but I have had much professional familiarity with water, and I doubted if there was going to be any fun there. So I said I would get out and walk, and I did. I need not tell anybody at home; I could leave out the Falls of the Rhone; they are not on the map, anyhow. …

Noon. — A mile of perpendicular precipices — very handsome. …

This is the prettiest piece of river we have found. …

1.p.m. — Chateau de la Salette. This is the port of the Grotte de la Balme, “one of the seven wonders of Dauphiny.” It is across a plain in the face of a bluff a mile from the river. A grotto is out of the common order, and I should have liked to see this one, but the rains have made the mud very deep and it did not seem well to venture so long a trip through it.

2.15 p.m. — St.-Etienne. On a distant ridge inland a tall openwork structure commandingly situated, with a statue of the Virgin standing on it.

Immense empty freight barges being towed upstream by teams of two and four big horses — not on the bank, but under it; not on the land, but always in the water — sometimes breast deep — and around the big flat bars.

We reached a not very promising-looking village about four o’clock, and concluded to land; munching fruit and filling the hood with pipe smoke had grown monotonous. We could not have the hood furled, because the floods of rain fell unceasingly. The tavern was on the river bank, as is the custom. It was dull there, and melancholy — nothing to do but look out of the window into the drenching rain and shiver; one could do that, for it was bleak and cold and windy, and there was no fire [Neider, Complete Essays 614-16].

Afloat on the Rhone, Sam also wrote to Charles Dudley Warner telling of his excursion down the river on a “flat bottomed scow with a water-proof hood” and raining “about half the time.”

Shall reach Lyons about noon to-morrow & float along down again next day. I expect to make the mouth by the 3d of October & then rush back to Ouchy-Lusanne & take the family immediately to Berlin. I left them all well last Saturday & most comfortably quartered in the Beau Rivage at Ouchy on the ground floor with the garden & boats handy. Jean learned to pull a pair of oars in first-rate style in about 15 minutes — the quickest education on record.

Thank goodness I can once more write with my rheumatic arm, but that is all. I can’t dress myself, & the arm is painful & just next to useless. Your letter arrived just as I was leaving Ouchy. Bon voyajj! To you — as these dam people yell to us along the shore. They take us for a circus — or maybe patients who have skipped out of an asylum [MTP].

The N.Y. Times, p.5, “Harper’s Weekly. Published to-morrow” reported that “a front page portrait of Samuel L. Clemens, (Mark Twain,) after a painting,” would be in the magazine.