“For having grown up.”

He was naturally full of the one subject that interested him, airplanes and chasing, and he would go round the house collecting audiences.  Strange bits of narration could be overheard from different rooms as he held forth: 

“Then I embusqued myself became a slacker....”

“What!”

“Oh!  I embusqued myself behind a cloud.”

Or, “The light dazzled me, so I hid the sun with my wing.”

He never forgot his sisters’ birthdays, but he could not always give them the present he preferred.  “Sorry I could not present you with a Boche.”

He was hardly different when his mother received company:  he was never seen to play the great man.  Only on one subject he always and instantly became serious, namely, when the future was mentioned.  “Do not let us make any plans,” he would say.

* * * * *

A page from one of my own notebooks will help to show Guynemer as I used to see him in his home.

Wednesday, June 27, 1917.—­Compiegne.  Called on the Guynemers.  He is fascination itself with his “goddess on the clouds” gait—­as if he remembered when walking that he could also fly—­with his incomparable eyes, his perpetual movement, his interior electricity, his admixture of elegance and ardor, and with that impulse of his whole being towards one object which suggests the antique runner, even when he is for an instant in repose.  His parents and sisters do not miss a single gesture, a single motion he makes.  They drink in his every word, and his life seems to absorb them.  His laugh echoes in their souls.  They believe in him, are sure of him, sure of his future, and that all will be well.  Noticing this certitude, whether real or assumed, I could not help stealing a glance at the frail god of aviation, made like the delicate statuettes that we dread breaking.  He talks passionately, as usual, of his aerial fights.  But just now one thought seems to supersede every other.  He is expecting a new machine, a magic machine which he planned long ago, found difficult to get built, and with which he must do more damage than ever.

Then he showed us his photographs with the white blotches of bursting shells, or the gray wings of German airplanes.  One of these is seen as it falls in flames, the pilot falling, too, some distance away from it.  Thus the victim was registered, and the memory of it made him happy.

I swallowed a question I was going to ask:  What about yourself—­some day? because he looked so full of life that the notion of death could never present itself to him.  But he seemed to have read my thoughts, for he said: 

“You have plenty of time in the air, except when you fight, and then you have no time at all.  I’ve been brought down six times, and I always had plenty of time to realize what was happening.”  And he laughed his clear, boyish laugh.

     As a matter of fact, he has been incredibly lucky.  In one fight he
     was hit three times, and each time the bullet was deadened by some
     unexpected obstacle.