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But as I did not want to lose any more of my diamonds, and there was no place at Alta Vista where they would be safe so long as Kidd was on the premises, I put them in a bag in the inside pocket of a quilted vest which I always wore on my mountain excursions, my intention being to take them on the following day down to San Cristobal and bestow them in a secure hiding-place.
There were no further difficulties. Work on the book did not go so well. There were many distractions in Washington, and Clemens did not like the climate there. Then he found the "Alta" had copyrighted his letters and were reluctant to allow him to use them. He decided to sail at once for San Francisco. If he could arrange the "Alta" matter, he would finish his work there.
To his hands was committed the carrying out of the order of banishment, the providing of members of some other Catholic Order to care for the Indians of the Missions, and later, to undertake the work of extending the chain of Missions northward into Alta California, as far north as the Bay of Monterey, and even beyond.
The cost of passage was $1.200, and the "Alta" hesitated, but Colonel McComb, already mentioned, assured his associates that the investment would be sound. The "Alta" wrote, accepting Mark Twain's proposal, and agreed to pay twenty dollars each for letters. Clemens hurried to New York to secure a berth, fearing the passenger-list might be full.
The mission-buildings were crumbling into ruins. Their lands were neglected; their converts for the most part dead or scattered. The rule of the padres was over. The Spanish missions in Alta California were things of the past.
"I had a letter from Madame Alta asking why I hadn't sold some stock I'd been holding for her? She lost a good deal by my not selling and she was in a devilish temper about it." Laura had not lowered her eyes, and as he finished she smiled into his face. "And you did not sell?" she asked.
Then Alta began, with a wonderfully soft touch, to play a succession of low, dreamy chords, rather than any set composition music that thrilled the listeners with vague suggestions of the unfathomable mystery and unutterable sadness of human life. She played on and on. It seemed to two of the hearers that she played for hours, although it was probably but a few minutes.
"Perhaps you did not select your examples very wisely," she remarked. Her look arrested him as he was about to reply, and he spoke evidently upon the impulse of the moment. "Did Gerty tell you about Madame Alta?" he enquired. She shook her head with an evasion of the question, "I don't remember that it was Gerty." "But you have heard of her?" "I've heard her," she answered.
"Oh, I couldn't I was brought up on your kind, and perfect as you are, you would only give me the tiresome, familiar society affair. There isn't any mystery about you. I know your secret." "Well, at least you didn't learn it from Madame Alta," she retorted. "From Madame Alta! Pshaw! she was never anything but a vocal instrument."
But walking one day in the fields about the city, I stumbled over a fragment of broken masonry, and lo! the World's Mistress in her stone girdle alta maenia Romae rose before me and whitened my cheek with her pale shadow as never before or since. I used very often, when coming home from my morning's work at one of the public institutions of Paris, to stop in at the dear old church of St.
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