Soon afterwards, as Guynemer was obliged once more to renounce his studies—­and this was the year in which he was preparing for the Polytechnique—­his father left him with his grandmother in Paris, to rest.  During this time he went to lectures on the social sciences, finally completing his education, which was strictly French, not one day having been passed with any foreign teacher.  After this he traveled with his mother and sisters, leading the life of the well-to-do young man who has plenty of time in which to plan his future.  Was he thinking of his future at all?  The question occurred to his father who, worried at the thought of his son’s idleness, recalled him and interrogated him as to his ideas of a future career, fully expecting to receive one of those undecided answers so often given by young men under similar circumstances.  But Georges replied, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and no other could ever have been considered: 

“Aviator.”

This reply was surprising.  What could have led him to a determination apparently so sudden?

“That is not a career,” he was told.  “Aviation is still only a sport.  You travel in the air as a motorist rides on the highways.  And after passing a few years devoted to pleasure, you hire yourself to some constructor.  No, a thousand times no!”

Then he said to his father what he had never said to anybody, and what his comrade Constantin had merely suspected: 

“That is my sole passion.  One morning in the courtyard at Stanislas I saw an airplane flying.  I don’t know what happened to me:  I felt an emotion so profound that it was almost religious.  You must believe me when I ask your permission to be an aviator.”

“You don’t know what an airplane is.  You never saw one except from below.”

“You are mistaken; I went up in one at Corbeaulieu.”

Corbeaulieu was an aerodrome near Compiegne; and these words were spoken a very few months before the war.

* * * * *

Many years before Georges Guynemer was a student at Stanislas, a professor, who was also destined to become famous, taught rhetoric there.  His name was Frederic Ozanam.  He too had been a precocious child, prematurely sure of his vocation for literature.  When only fifteen he had composed in Latin verse an epitaph in honor of Gaston de Foix, dead at Ravenna.  This epitaph, if two words are changed—­Hispanae into hostilis, and Gaston into Georges—­describes perfectly the short and admirable career of Guynemer.  Even the palms are included: 

Fortunate heros! moriendo in saecula vives. 
Eia, agite, o socii, manibus profundite flores,
Lilia per tumulum, violamque rosamque recentem
Spargite; victricis armis superaddite lauros,
Et tumulo tales mucrone inscribite voces: 
Hic jacet hostilis gentis timor et decus omne
Gallorum, Georgius, conditus ante diem: 
Credidit hunc Lachesis juvenem dum cerneret annos,
Sed palmas numerans credidit esse senem.[12]