ed for what?"

"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 regist