Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 2.djvu/189

 for Dr. Kitchener, or the Almanach des Gourmands? you, whose food is the dew of heaven, and the honied juices which you distil from every flower? Shadowed by a leaf of that thick shrub, I could for a moment fancy that your colour was sooty black; and yet now that the soft wind has blown the leaf aside, my eye is suddenly dazzled at the resplendent glow of your vivid purple. Now I gaze in admiration at the delightful, and amazing variety of your shifting tints playing in the sunbeam; now, as it is lighting up the splendour of your purple mantle, and now lending fresh brilliancy to your rings of burnished gold!

My brilliant purple Emperor! I must have you—I must indeed:—but I wish, if possible, to bring you down, rather by the respiration of my flank than the impulse of my thong.—Smack!—Confound the easterly wind playing up my nostril. I've missed him—and there he flies, mounting higher and higher, till at last