[Illustration:  COMBAT]

One day his father felt doubts about the capacity of such a young man to resist the intoxication of so much flattery from men and women.

“Don’t worry,” Guynemer answered, “I am watching my nerves as an acrobat watches his muscles.  I have chosen my own mission, and I must fulfil it.”

After his death, one of his friends, the one who spoke to him last, told me:  “He used to put aside heaps of flattering letters which he did not even read.  ‘Read them if you like,’ he said to me, and I destroyed them.  He only read letters from children, schoolboys and soldiers.”

In L’Aiglon Prokesch brings the mail to the Prince Imperial, and handing him letters from women, he says: 

                            Voila
     Ce que c’est d’avoir l’aureole fatale.

As soon as Prokesch begins to read them, the Prince stops him with the words:  “Je dechire.”  Even when a woman whom he has nicknamed “Little Spring”—­“because the water sleeping in her eyes or purling in her voice has often cooled his fever”—­announces her departure, hoping he may detain her, he lets her go, whispering again like a refrain, “Je dechire.”

Did Guynemer deal with hearts as he dealt with the besieging letters, or as the falcon of St. Jean l’Hospitalier dealt with birds?—­No “Little Spring,” had her voice been ever so rill-like, could have detained him when a sunny morning invited him skywards.

* * * * *

Safe from the admiring public, Guynemer would relax and breathe freely with his people at Compiegne, where he became once more a lively, noisy, indulged, but coaxing and charming boy, except when absorbed in work, from which nothing could distract him.  He spent hours in pasting and classifying the snapshots he took of his enemies just before pulling the trigger of his machine-gun and bringing them down.  One of his greatest pleasures when on leave was to arrange and show these photographs.

His eyes, which saw everything, were keen to detect the least changes in the arrangement of his home, even when mere knickknacks had been moved about.  At each visit he found the house ornamented with some new trophy of his exploits.  He was delighted to find that a miniature barkentine, which he had built with corks, paper, and thread when he was seven years old, still stood on his mother’s mantelpiece.  Even at that age his powers of observation had been evident, and he had forgotten no detail of sails or rigging.

He had taken again so naturally his old place in the family circle that his mother forgot once and called the tall, famous young man by his old familiar name, “Bebe.”  She quickly corrected herself, but he said: 

“I am always that to you, Mother.”

“I was happier when you were little,” she observed.

“I hope you are not vexed with me, Mother.”

“Vexed for what?”