e 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.

There is nothing in any of his earlier notes or letters to indicate that
he contemplated the story of Joan as early as the eighties; but there
is a bibliographical list of various works on the subject, probably
compiled for him not much later than 1880, for the latest published work
of the list bears that date. He was then too busy with his inventions
and publishing schemes to really undertake a work requiring such vast
preparation; but without doubt he procured a number of books and renewed
that old interest begun so long ago when a stray wind had blown a leaf
from that tragic life into his own. Joan of Arc, by Janet Tuckey, was
apparently the first book he read with the definite idea of study, for
this little volume had been recently issued, and his copy, which still
exists, is filled with his marginal notes. He did not speak of this
volume in discussing the matter in after-years. He may have forgotten
it. He dwelt mainly on the old records of the trial which had been dug
out and put into modern French by Quicherat; the 'Jeanne d'Arc' of J.
Michelet, and the splendid 'Life of the Maid' of Lord Ronald Gower,
these being remembered as hi