lively and good humored....”  Next day he gives some details of his billet, and adds:  “I have had a mitrailleuse support mounted on my machine, and now I am ready for the hunt....  Yesterday at five o’clock I darted around above the house at 1700 or 2000 meters.  Did you see me?  I forced my motor for five minutes in hopes that you would hear me.”  He had recently parted from his family, and a happy chance had brought him to fight over the very lines that protected his own home.  The front of the Sixth Army to which he was attached, extending from Ribecourt beyond the forest of Laigue, passed in front of Railly and Tracy-le-Val, hollowed itself before the enemy salient of Moulin-sous-Touvent, straightened itself again near Autreches and Nouvron-Vingre, covered Soissons, whose very outskirts were menaced, was obliged to turn back on the left bank of the Aisne where the enemy took, in January, 1915, the bridge-head at Conde, and Vailly and Chavonne, and crossed the river again at Soupir which belonged to us.  Laon, La Fere, Coucy-le-Chateau, Chauny, Noyon, Ham, and Peronne were the objects of his reconnoitering flights.

War acts more poignantly, more directly upon a soldier whose own home is immediately behind him.  If the front were pierced in the sector which had been intrusted to him, his own people would be exposed.  So he becomes their sentinel.  Under such conditions, la Patrie is no longer merely the historic soil of the French people, the sacred ground every parcel of which is responsible for all the rest, but also the beloved home of infancy, the home of parents, and, for this collegian of yesterday, the scene of charming walks and delightful vacations.  He has but just now left the paternal mansion; and, not yet accustomed to the separation, he visits it by the roads of the air, the only ones which he is now free to travel.  He does not take advantage of his proximity to Compiegne to go ring the familiar door-bell, because he is a soldier and respects orders; but, on returning from his rounds, he does not hesitate to turn aside a bit in order to pass over his home, indulging up there in the sky in all sorts of acrobatic caprioles to attract attention and prolong the interview.  What lover was ever more ingenious and madder in his rendezvous?

Throughout all his correspondence he recalls his air visits.  “You must have seen my head, for I never took my eyes off the house....”  Or, after an aerial somersault that filled all those down below with terror:  “I am wretched to know that my veering the other day frightened maman so much, but I did it so as to see the house without having to lean over the side of the machine, which is unpleasant on account of the wind....”  Or sometimes he threw down a paper which was picked up in Count Foy’s park:  “Everything is all right.”  He thought he was reassuring his parents about his safety; but their state of mind can be conceived when they beheld, exactly over their heads, an airplane engaged apparently in performing a dance, while through their binoculars they could see the tiny black speck of a head which looked over its side.  He had indeed a singular fashion of reassuring them!