nemer could
not have been taken prisoner. Where was he, then?

On the squadron log, _sous-lieutenant_ Bozon-Verduraz wrote that evening
as follows:

_Tuesday, September 11, 1917._ Patrolled. Captain Guynemer started
at 8.25 with _sous-lieutenant_ Bozon-Verduraz. Found missing after
an engagement with a biplane above Poelkapelle (Belgium).

That was all.

IV. THE VIGIL

Before Guynemer, other knights of the air, other aces, had been reported
missing or had perished--some like Captain Le Cour Grandmaison or
Captain Auger in our lines, others like Sergeant Sauvage and
_sous-lieutenant_ Dorme in the enemy's. In fact, he would be the
thirteenth on the list if the title of ace is reserved for aviators to
whom the controlling board has given its vise for five undoubted
victories. These were the names:

Captain Le Cour Grandmaison 5 victories
Sergeant Hauss 5 "
_sous-lieutenant_ Delorme 5 "
_sous-lieutenant_ Pegoud 6 "
_sous-lieutenant_ Languedoc 7 "
Captain Auger 7 "
Captain Doumer 7 "
_sous-lieutenant_ Rochefort 7 "
Sergeant Sauvage 8 "
Captain Matton 9 "
Adjutant Lenoir 11 "
_sous-lieutenant_ Dorme 23 "

Would Guynemer's friends now have to add: Captain Guynemer, 53? Nobody
dared to do so, yet nobody now dared hope.

A poet of genius, who even before the war had been an aviator, Gabriele
d'Annunzio, has described in his novel, _Forse che si forse che no_, the
friendship of two young men, Paolo Tarsis and Giulio Cambasio, whose
mutual affection, arising from a similar longing to conquer the sky, has
grown in the perils they dare together. If this book had been written
later, war would have intensified its meaning. Instead of dying in a
fight, Cambasio is killed in a contest for altitude between Bergamo and
the Lake of Garda. As Achilles watched beside the dead body of
Patroclus, so Tarsis would not leave to another the guarding of his lost
friend:

"In tearless grief Paolo Tarsis kept vigil through the short summer
night. So it had broken asunder the richest bough on the tree of his
life; the most generous part of himself ruined. For him the beauty of
war had diminished, now that he was no longer to see, burning in those
dead eyes, the fervor of ef