Roland was the example for all the knights in history. Guynemer
should be the example for Frenchmen now, and each one will try to
imitate him and will remember him as we have remembered Roland. I,
especially, I shall never forget him, for I shall remember that he
died for France, like my dear Papa.

This little French boy's description of Guynemer is true and, limited as
it is, sufficient: Guynemer is the modern Roland, with the same
redoubtable youth and fiery soul. He is the last of the knights-errant,
the first of the new knights of the air. His short life needs only
accurate telling to appear like a legend. The void he left is so great
because every household had adopted him. Each one shared in his
victories, and all have written his name among their own dead.

Guynemer's glory, to have so ravished the minds of children, must have
been both simple and perfect, and as his biographer I cannot dream of
equaling the young Paul Bailly. But I shall not take his hero from him.
Guynemer's life falls naturally into the legendary rhythm, and the
simple and exact truth resembles a fairy tale.

The writers of antiquity have mourned in touching accents the loss of
young men cut down in the flower of their youth. "The city," sighs
Pericles, "has lost its light, the year has lost its spring." Theocritus
and Ovid in turn lament the short life of Adonis, whose blood was
changed into flowers. And in Virgil the father of the gods, whom Pallas
supplicates before facing Turnus, warns him not to confound the beauty
of life with its length:

Stat sua cuique dies; breve et irreparabile tempus
Omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,