She raised her face to mine. "Kiss me," she said innocently; the next
moment she had vanished. I walked deliberately into the Purple Emperor's room and peered into
the gauze-covered box which had held the chrysalis of Apatura Iris. It
was as I expected. The chrysalis was empty and transparent, and a great
crack ran down the middle of its back, but, on the netting inside the
box, a magnificent butterfly slowly waved its burnished purple wings;
for the chrysalis had given up its silent tenant, the butterfly symbol
of immortality. Then a great fear fell upon me. I know now that it was
the fear of the Black Priest, but neither then nor for years after did
I know that the Black Priest had ever lived on earth. As I bent over
the box I heard a confused murmur outside the house which ended in
a furious shout of "Parricide!" and I heard the gendarmes ride away
behind a wagon which rattled sharply on the flinty highway. I went
to the window. In the wagon sat Yves Terrec, bound and wild-eyed, two
gendarmes at either side of him, and all around the wagon rode mounted
gendarmes whose bared sabres scarcely kept the crowd away. "Parricide!" they howled. "Let him die!" I stepped back and opened the gauze-covered box. Very gently but firmly
I took the splendid butterfly by its closed fore wings and lifted it
unharmed between my thumb and forefinger. Then, holding it concealed
behind my back, I went down into the café. Of all the crowd that had filled it, shouting for the death of Yves
Terrec, only three persons remained seated in front of the huge empty
fireplace. They were the Brigadier Durand, Max Fortin, the chemist
of Quimperlé, and the Purple Emperor. The latter looked abashed when
I entered, but I paid no attention to him and walked straight to the
chemist. "Monsieur Fortin," I said, "do you know much about hydrocarbons?" "They are my specialty," he said astonished. "Have you ever heard of such a thing as cythyl?" "Schweineri's cythyl? Oh, yes! We use it in perfumery." "Good!" I said. "Has it an odour?" "No--and, yes. One is always aware of its presence, but really nobody
can affirm it has an odour. It is curious," he continued, looking at
me, "it is very curious you should have asked me that, for all day I
have been imagining I detected the presence of cythyl." "Do you imagine so now?" I asked. "Yes, more than ever." I sprang to the front door and tossed out the butterfly. The splendid
creature beat the air for a moment, flitted uncertainly hither
and thither, and then, to my astonishment, sailed majestically
back into the café and alighted on the hearthstone. For a moment
I was nonplussed, but when my eyes rested on the Purple Emperor I
comprehended in a flash. "Lift that hearthstone!" I cried to the Brigadier Durand; "pry it up
with your scabbard!" The Purple Emperor suddenly fell forward in his chair, his face ghastly
white, his jaw loose with terror. "What is cythyl?" I shouted, seizing him by the arm; but he plunged
heavily from his chair, face downward on the floor, and at the same
moment a cry from the chemist made me turn. There stood the Brigadier
Durand, one hand supporting the hearthstone, one hand raised in horror. There stood Max Fortin, the chemist, rigid with excitement, and below,
in the hollow bed where the hearthstone had rested, lay a crushed mass
of bleeding human flesh, from the midst of which stared a cheap glass
eye. I seized the Purple Emperor and dragged him to his feet. "Look!" I cried; "look at your old friend, the Red Admiral!" but he
only smiled in a vacant way, and rolled his head muttering; "Bait for
butterflies! Cythyl! Oh, no, no, no! You can't do it, Admiral, d'ye
see. I alone own the Purple Emperor! I alone am the Purple Emperor!" And the same carriage that bore me to Quimperlé to claim my bride,
carried him to Quimper, gagged and bound, a foaming, howling lunatic. *       *       *       *       *

This, then, is the story of the Purple Emperor. I might tell you a
pleasanter story if I chose; but concerning the fish that I had hold
of, whether it was a salmon, a grilse, or a sea trout, I may not say,
because I have promised Lys, and she has promised me, that no power on
earth shall wring from our lips the mortifying confession that the fish
escaped. POMPE FUNÈBRE. A wind-swept sky,
  The waste of moorland stretching to the west;
  The sea, low moaning in a strange unrest--
            A seagull's cry. Washed by the tide,
  The rocks lie sullen in the waning light;
  The foam breaks in long strips of hungry white,
            Dissatisfied. BATEMAN. POMPE FUNÈBRE. In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble. When I first saw the sexton he was standing motionless behind a stone. Presently he moved on again, pausing at times, and turning right and
left with that nervous, jerky motion that always chills me. His path lay across the blighted moss and withered leaves scattered
in moist layers along the bank of the little brown stream, and I,
wondering what his errand might be, followed, passing silently over the
rotting forest mould. Once or twice he heard me, for I saw him stop
short, a blot of black and orange in the sombre woods; but he always
started on again, hurrying at times as though the dead might grow
impatient. For the sexton that I followed through the November forest was one
of those small creatures that God has sent to bury little things that
die alone in the world. Undertaker, sexton, mute, and gravedigger in
one, this thing, robed in black and orange, buries all things that die
unheeded by the world. And so they call it--this little beetle in black
and orange--the "sexton." How he hurried! I looked up into the gray sky where ashen branches,
interlaced, swayed in unfelt winds, and I heard the dry leaves rattle
in the tree tops, and the thud of acorns on the mould. A sombre bird
peered at me from a heap of brush, then ran pattering over the leaves. The sexton had reached a bit of broken ground, and was scuffling over
sticks and gulleys toward a brown tuft of withered grass above. I dared
not help him; besides, I could not bring myself to touch him, he was so
horribly absorbed in his errand. I halted for a moment. The eagerness of this live creature to find his
dead and handle it; the odour of death and decay in this little forest
world, where I had waited for spring when Lys moved among the flowering
gorse, singing like a throstle in the wind--all this troubled me, and
I lagged behind. The sexton scrambled over the dead grass, raising his seared eyes at
every wave of wind. The wind brought sadness with it, the scent of
lifeless trees, the vague rustle of gorse buds, yellow and dry as paper
flowers. Along the stream, rotting water plants, scorched and frost-blighted,
lay massed above the mud. I saw their pallid stems swaying like worms
in the listless current. The sexton had reached a mouldering stump, and now he seemed undecided.