her with its moonlit roofs and its
surrounding plain, looking bluish in the night. The city is asleep, but
the holy woman watches and prays. She stands tall and upright as a lily.
Her lamp, which is seen at the entrance of her house, is one long stem
illuminated by the flame. She, too, is like this lamp. Her emaciated
body would be nothing without her ardent face. Her serenity can only
come from work well done and confidence in the future. Lutetia,
represented in this picture by Genevieve, is not anxious; yet she
listens as if she might hear once more the threatening approach of
Attila. It is because she knows that the barbarians may come back again,
and can only be stopped by invincible faith.

As long as France keeps her belief, she is secure. The life and death of
a Guynemer are an act of faith in immortal France.

ENVOI

The _ballades_ of olden times used to conclude with an _envoi_ addressed
to some powerful person and invariably beginning with King, Queen,
Prince or Princess. But the poet was occasionally at a loss, for, as
Theodore de Banville observes in his _Petit traite de Poesie Francaise_,
"everybody has not a prince handy to whom to dedicate his _ballade_."

Guynemer's biography is of such a nature that it must seem like a poem:
why not, then, conclude it with an _envoi_? I have no difficulty in
finding a Prince, for I shall select him from among the French
schoolboys. There is a little Paul Bailly, not quite twelve years old,
from Bouclans, a village in Franche-Comte, who wrote a beautiful theme
on Guynemer: he shall be my Prince. And through him I shall address all
the French schoolboys or girls, in all the French towns and villages.

Little Prince, I have no doubt that you love arithmetic, and I will give
you accurate figures which will satisfy your taste. You will like to
know that Guynemer flew for 665 hours and 55 seconds in all, which I
added up from his flying notebooks: his last flight is not recorded in
them, because it never stopped.

As for the number of fights in which he was engaged, that is difficult
to ascertain. Guynemer himself did not seem anxious to be sure about it.
But it must be more than 600, and might well be 700 or 800. Your
Guynemer, our Guynemer, will never be surpassed: not because he forgot
to hand over to his successors, rivals, and avengers the sacred flame
which in France can never go out, but because genius is an exceptional
privilege, and because the present metho