“How can one enlist in the aviation corps?”

“Arrange it with the captain; go to Pau.”

Georges runs at once to the Villa Delphine.  His parents no longer recognize the step and the face of the preceding days; he looks like their son again; he is saved.

“Father, I want to go to Pau to-morrow.”

“Why this trip to Pau?”

“To enlist in the aviation corps.  Before the war you wouldn’t hear of my being an aviator, but in war aviation is no longer a sport.”

“In war—­yes, it is certainly quite another thing.”

Next day he reached Pau, where Captain Bernard-Thierry was in command of the aviation camp.  He forced his way through Captain Bernard-Thierry’s door, over the expostulations of the sentries.  He explained his case and pleaded his cause with such fire in his eyes that the officer was dazed and fascinated.  From the tones of the captain’s voice, when he referred to the two successive rejections, Guynemer knew he had made an impression.  As he had done at Stanislas when he wanted to soften some punishment inflicted by his master, so now he brought every argument to bear, one after another; but with how much more ardor he made this plea, for his future was at stake!  He bewitched his hearer.  And then suddenly he became a child again, imploring and ready to cry.

“Captain, help me—­employ me—­employ me at anything, no matter what.  Let me clean those airplanes over there.  You are my last resource.  It must be through you that I can do something at last in the war.”

The captain reflected gravely.  He felt the power hidden in this fragile body.  He could not rebuff a suppliant like this one.

“I can take you as student mechanician.”

“That’s it, that’s it; I understand automobiles.”

Guynemer exulted, as Jean Krebs’ technical lessons flashed already into his mind; they would be of great help in his work.  The officer gave him a letter to the recruiting officer at Bayonne, and he went back there for the third time.  This time his name was entered, he was taken, and he signed a voluntary engagement.  This was on November 21, 1914.  There was no need for him to explain to the family what had occurred when he returned to the Villa Delphine:  he was beaming.

“You are going?” said his mother and sisters.

“Surely.”

Next day he made his debut at the aviation camp at Pau as student mechanician.  He had entered the army by the back door, but he had got in.  The future knight of the air was now the humblest of grooms.  “I do not ask any favors for him,” his father wrote to the captain.  “All I ask is that he may perform any services he is capable of.”  He had to be tried and proved deserving, to pass through all the minor ranks before being worthy to wear the casque sacre.  The petted child of Compiegne and the Villa Delphine had the most severe of apprenticeships.  He slept on the floor, and