"Robert Chalmers - Purple Emperor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalmers Robert)

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 dragonfly? 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 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."

"What's that?" I demanded.

Before he could answer there came a heavy splash in the pool, and
the fly disappeared.

"He! he! he!" tittered the Purple Emperor. "Didn't I tell you the fish
knew their business? That was a sea-trout. I hope you don't get
him."

He gathered up his butterfly net, collecting box, chloroform bottle,