THE PURPLE EMPEROR
Un souvenir heureux est peut-être, sur terre,
Plus vrai que le bonheur.
A. de Musset.
I
The Purple Emperor watched me in silence. I cast again, spinning out six feet more of waterproof silk, and, as the line hissed through the air far across the pool, I saw my three flies fall on the water like drifting thistledown. The Purple Emperor sneered.
"You see," he said, "I am right. There is not a trout in Brittany that will rise to a tailed fly."
"They do in America," I replied.
"Zut! for America!" observed the Purple Emperor.
"And trout take a tailed fly in England," I insisted sharply.
"Now do I care what things or people do in England?" demanded the Purple Emperor.
"You don't care for anything except yourself and your wriggling caterpillars," I said, more annoyed than I had yet been.
The Purple Emperor sniffed. His broad, hairless, sunburnt features bore that obstinate expression which always irritated me. Perhaps the manner in which he wore his hat intensified the irritation, for the flapping brim rested on both ears, and the two little velvet ribbons which hung from the silver buckle in front wiggled and fluttered with every trivial breeze. His cunning eyes and sharp-pointed nose were out of all keeping with his fat red face. When he met my eye, he chuckled.
"I know more about insects than any man in Morbihan – or Finistère either, for that matter," he said.
"The Red Admiral knows as much as you do," I retorted.
"He doesn't," replied the Purple Emperor angrily.
"And his collection of butterflies is twice as large as yours," I added, moving down the stream to a spot directly opposite him.
"It is, is it?" sneered the Purple Emperor. "Well, let me tell you, Monsieur Darrel, in all his collection he hasn't a specimen, a single specimen, of that magnificent butterfly, Apatura Iris, commonly known as the 'Purple Emperor.'"
"Everybody in Brittany knows that," I said, casting across the sparkling water; "but just because you happen to be the only man who ever captured a 'Purple Emperor' in Morbihan, it doesn't follow that you are an authority on sea-trout flies. Why do you say that a Breton sea-trout won't touch a tailed fly?"
"It's so," he replied.
"Why? There are plenty of May-flies about the stream."
"Let 'em fly!" snarled the Purple Emperor, "you won't see a trout touch 'em."
My arm was aching, but I grasped my split bamboo more firmly, and, half turning, waded out into the stream and began to whip the ripples at the head of the pool. A great green dragon-fly came drifting by on the summer breeze and hung a moment above the pool, glittering like an emerald.
"There's a chance! Where is your butterfly net?" I called across the stream.
"What for? That dragon-fly? I've got dozens – Anax Junius, Drury, characteristic, anal angle of posterior wings, in male, round; thorax marked with – "
"That will do," I said fiercely. "Can't I point out an insect in the air without this burst of erudition? Can you tell me, in simple everyday French, what this little fly is – this one, flitting over the eel grass here beside me? See, it has fallen on the water."
"Huh!" sneered the Purple Emperor, "that's a Linnobia annulus."
