was employed in the dirtiest work about camp, cleaned cylinders and carried cans of petroleum.  In this milieu he heard words and theories which dumbfounded him, not knowing then that men frequently do not mean all that they say.  On November 26, he wrote Abbe Chesnais:  “I have the pleasure of informing you that after two postponements during a vain effort to enlist, I have at last succeeded. Time and patience ...  I am writing you in the mess, while two comrades are elaborating social theories....”

Would he be able to endure this workman’s existence?  His parents were not without anxiety.  They hesitated to leave Biarritz and return to their home in Compiegne in the rue Saint-Lazare, on the edge of the forest.  But, so far from being injured by manual labor, the child constantly grew stronger.  In his case spirit had always triumphed over matter, and compelled it to obedience on every occasion.  So now he followed his own object with indomitable energy.  He took an airplane to pieces before mounting in it, and learned to know it in every detail.

His preparation for the Ecole Polytechnique assured him a brilliant superiority in his present surroundings.  He could explain the laws of mechanics, and tell his wonderstruck comrades what is meant by the resultant of several forces and the equilibrium of forces, giving them unexpected notions about kinematics and dynamics.[13] From the laboratory or industrial experiments then being made, he acquired, on his part, a knowledge of the resisting power of the materials used in aviation:  wood, steel, steel wires, aluminum and its composites, copper, copper alloys and tissues.  He saw things made—­those famous wings that were one day to carry him up into the blue—­with their longitudinal spars of ash or hickory, their ribs of light wood, their interior bracing of piano wire, their other bracing wires, and their wing covering.  He saw the workmen prepare all the material for mortise and tenon work, saw them attach the tension wires, fit in the ends of poles, and finally connect together all the parts of an airplane,—­wings, rudders, motor, landing frame, body.  As a painter grinds his colors before making use of them, so Guynemer’s prelude to his future flights was to touch with his hands—­those long white hands of the rich student, now tanned and callous, often coated with soot or grease, and worthy to be the hands of a laborer—­every piece, every bolt and screw of these machines which were to release him from his voluntary servitude.

[Footnote 13:  See Etude raisonnee de l’aeroplane, by Jules Bordeaux, formerly student at Ecole Polytechnique (Gauthier-Billars, edition 1912).]