MARK TWAIN

Sunday, Oct. 10, The princess did me the honor to
send and invite me down to her parlor, this afternoon
and added the further honor of saying that if I was not
yet strong enough to leave my quarters she would come
up and see me. I went down at 4:30 and was received in
a way which put me at my ease at once. She came to the
door when I was announced and put out her hand and
gave me a hearty grasp and shake, and said—"I am very,
very glad to meet you and know you, Mr. Clemens—I
have read your books and am familiar with them and
they have given me great enjoyment." I said—"It is a
great happiness to meet your Royal Highness, and what
you have said makes me very proud." She gave me a
chair and when she had seated herself I sat down and the
talk at once flowed freely. She wanted to know how I came
to get interested in Joan of Arc, and said she had read
my book through three times and had then given it to a
young girls' school which she had founded. Speaking of
Joan's fate she said—"Poor child, but for the priests it
would not have happened; but whenever they meddle,
harm must come to somebody."

"Particularly when they and politics join teams and
meddle together" I said. She assented so zealously that I
reminded her that she shouldn't have such opinions as
that—they were proper to my sort of folk. But she said
she had such opinions and feelings, and was used to put-
ting them in words. There was some talk about the Greet
situation, and I said she seemed to have a liking for
politics. And so on, and so on. And she mentioned Gen.
von Versen and regretted his death, and said she knew
I had dined in his house to meet the German Emperor-
said the Emperor had told her about it.

And then some talk about her daughter and the be-
trothal to the young Prince Reuss—said—"It took place
in this room, a week ago today." I said that it must have

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