Somebody, however, was to exert over this impressionable, mobile, almost too ardent nature, an influence which was to determine its direction.  His father had advised him to choose his friends with care, and not yield himself to the first comer.  He was not only incapable of doing that, but equally incapable of yielding himself to anybody.  Do we really choose our friends in early life?  We only know our friends by finding them in our lives when we need them.  They are there, but we have not sought them.  A similarity of taste, of sensibility, of ambitions draw us to them, and they have been our friends a long time already before we perceive that they are not merely comrades.  Thus Jean Krebs became the constant companion of Georges Guynemer.  The father of Jean Krebs is that Colonel Krebs whose name is connected with the first progress made in aerostation and aviation.  He was then director of the Panhard factories, and his two sons were students at Stanislas.  Jean, the elder, was Guynemer’s classmate.  He was a silent, self-centered, thoughtful student, calm in speech and facial expression, never speaking one word louder than another, and the farthest possible removed from anything noisy or agitated.  Georges broke in upon his solitude and attached himself to him, while Krebs endured, smiled, and accepted, and they became allies.  It was Krebs, for the time, who was the authority, the one who had prestige and wore the halo.  Why, he knew what an automobile was, and one Sunday he took his friend Georges to Ivry and taught him how to drive.  He taught him every technical thing he knew.  Georges launched with all his energy into this new career, and soon became acquainted with every motor in existence.  During the school promenades, if the column of pupils walked up or down the Champs Elysees, he told them the names of passing automobiles:  “That’s a Lorraine.  There is a Panhard.  This one has so many horsepower,” etc.  Woe to any who ventured to contradict him.  He looked the insolent one up and down, and crushed him with a word.

He was overjoyed when the college organized Thursday afternoon visits to factories.  He chose his companions in advance, sometimes compelling them to give up a game of tennis.  Krebs was one of them.  For Georges the visits to the Puteaux and Dion-Bouton factories were a feast of which he was often to speak later.  He went, not as a sightseer, but as a connoisseur.  He could not bring himself to remain with the engineer who showed the party through the works.  He required more liberty, more time to investigate everything for himself, to see and touch everything.  The smallest detail interested him; he questioned the workmen, asking them the use of some screw, and a thousand other things.  The visit was too soon over for him; and when his comrades had already left, and the division prefect was calling the roll to make sure of all his boys, Guynemer as usual was missing, and was discovered standing in ecstasy before a machine which some workmen were engaged in setting up.