The situation of this villa is perfect.  It is three miles from Florence, on the side of a hill.  Beyond some hill-spurs is Fiesole perched upon its steep terraces; in the immediate foreground is the imposing mass of the Ross castle, its walls and turrets rich with the mellow weather-stains of forgotten centuries; in the distant plain lies Florence, pink & gray & brown, with the ruddy, huge dome of the cathedral dominating its center like a captive balloon, & flanked on the right by the smaller bulb of the Medici chapel & on the left by the airy tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; all around the horizon is a billowy rim of lofty blue hills, snowed white with innumerable villas.  After nine months of familiarity with this panorama I still think, as I thought in the beginning, that this is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye & the spirit.  To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink & purple & golden floods, & overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim & faint & turn the solid city into a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature & make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.

The Clemens household at Florence consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, Susy, and Jean.  Clara had soon returned to Berlin to attend Mrs. Willard’s school and for piano instruction.  Mrs. Clemens improved in the balmy autumn air of Florence and in the peaceful life of their well-ordered villa.  In a memorandum of October 27th Clemens wrote: 

The first month is finished.  We are wonted now.  This carefree life at a Florentine villa is an ideal existence.  The weather is divine, the outside aspects lovely, the days and nights tranquil and reposeful, the seclusion from the world and its worries as satisfactory as a dream.  Late in the afternoons friends come out from the city & drink tea in the open air & tell what is happening in the world; & when the great sun sinks down upon Florence & the daily miracle begins they hold their breath & look.  It is not a time for talk.

No wonder he could work in that environment.  He finished ’Tom Sawyer Abroad’, also a short story, ‘The L 1,000,000 Bank-Note’ (planned many years before), discovered the literary mistake of the ’Extraordinary Twins’ and began converting it into the worthier tale, ’Pudd’nhead Wilson’, soon completed and on its way to America.

With this work out of his hands, Clemens was ready for his great new undertaking.  A seed sown by the wind more than forty years before was ready to bloom.  He would write the story of Joan of Arc.

CLXXXIII

THE SIEUR DE CONTE AND JOAN

In a note which he made many years later Mark Twain declared that he was fourteen years at work on Joan of Arc; that he had been twelve years preparing for it, and that he was two years in writing it.