So was Georges Guynemer reared, in the cult of truth, and taught that to deceive is to lower oneself.  Even in his infancy he was already as proud as any personage.  His early years were protected by the gentle and delicate care of his mother and his two sisters, who hung adoringly over him and were fascinated by his strange black eyes.  What was to become of a child whose gaze was difficult to endure, and whose health was so fragile, for when only a few months old he had almost died of infantile enteritis.  His parents had been obliged to carry him hastily to Switzerland, and then to Hyeres, and to keep him in an atmosphere like that of a hothouse.  Petted and spoiled, tended by women, like Achilles at Scyros among the daughters of Lycomedes, would he not bear all his life the stamp of too softening an education?  Too pretty and too frail, with his curls and his dainty little frock, he had an air de princesse.  His father felt that a mistake was being made, and that this excess of tenderness must be promptly ended.  He took the child on his knees; a scene as trifling as it was decisive was about to be enacted: 

“I almost feel like taking you with me, where I am going.”

“Where are you going, father?”

“There, where I am going, there are only men.”

“I want to go with you.”

The father seemed to hesitate, and then to decide: 

“After all, too early is better than too late.  Put on your hat.  I shall take you.”  He took him to the hairdresser.

“I am going to have my hair cut.  How do you feel about it?”

“I want to do like men.”

The child was set upon a stool where, in the white combing-cloth, with his curly hair, he resembled an angel done by an Italian Primitive.  For an instant the father thought himself a barbarian, and the barber hesitated, scissors in air, as before a crime.  They exchanged glances; then the father stiffened and gave the order.  The beautiful curls fell.

But now it became necessary to return home; and when his mother saw him, she wept.

“I am a man,” the child announced, peremptorily.

He was indeed to be a man, but he was to remain for a long time also a mischievous boy—­nearly, in fact, until the end.

When he was six or seven years old he began to study with the teacher of his sisters, which was convenient and agreeable, but meant the addition of another petticoat.  The fineness of his feelings, his fear of having wounded any comrade, which were later to inspire him in so many touching actions, were the result of this feminine education.  His walks with his father, who already gave him much attention, brought about useful reactions.  Compiegne is rich in the history of the past:  kings were crowned there, and kings died there.  The Abbey of Saint Cornille sheltered, perhaps, the holy winding-sheet of Christ.  Treaties were signed at Compiegne, and there magnificent fetes were given by Louis XIV, Louis XV, Napoleon I, and Napoleon III.  And even in 1901 the child met Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra, who were staying there.  So, the palace and the forest spoke to him of a past which his father could explain.  And on the Place de l’Hotel de Ville he was much interested in the bronze statue of the young girl, bearing a banner.