ilotes_, but _pilotes
aviateurs_. By reason of this distinction we passed from the rank of
soldier of the second class to that of corporal. At the tailor's shop
the wings and star insignia were sewn upon our collars and our
corporal's stripes upon our sleeves. For we were proud, as every
aviator is proud, who reaches the end of his apprenticeship and enters
into the dignity of a brevetted military pilot.

* * * * *

Six months have passed since I made the last entry in my journal. J.
B. was asleep in his historic bed, and I was sitting at a rickety
table writing by candle-light, stopping now and then to listen to the
mutter of guns on the Aisne front. It was only at night that we could
hear them, and then not often, the very ghost of sound, as faint as
the beating of the pulses in one's ears. That was a May evening, and
this, one late in November. I arrived at the Gare du Nord only a few
hours ago. Never before have I come to Paris with a finer sense of the
joy of living. I walked down the rue Lafayette, through the rue de
Provence, the rue du Havre, to a little hotel in the vicinity of the
Gare Saint-Lazare. Under ordinary circumstances none of these streets,
nor the people in them, would have appeared particularly interesting.
But on this occasion--it was the finest walk of my life. I saw
everything with the eyes of the _permissionnaire_, and sniffed the
odors of roasting chestnuts, of restaurants, of shops, of people,
never so keenly aware of their numberless variety.

After dinner I walked out on the boulevards from the Madeleine to the
Place de la Republique, through the maze of narrow streets to the
river, and over the Pont Neuf to Notre Dame. I was surprised that the
spell which Hugo gives it should have lost none of its old potency
for me after coming direct from the realities of modern warfare. If
he were writing this journal, what a story it would be!

It will be necessary to pass rapidly over the period between the day
when we received our _brevets militaires_ and that upon which we
started for the front. The event which bulked largest to us was, of
course, the departure on active service. Preceding it, and next in
importance, was the last phase of our training and the culmination of
it all, at the School of Acrobacy. Preliminary to our work there, we
had a six weeks' course of instruction, first on the twin-motor
Caudron and then on various types of the Nieuport biplane. We