II. HOME AND COLLEGE

One of the generals best loved by the French troops, General de M----, a
learned talker and charming moralist, who always seemed in his
conversation to wander through the history of France, like a sorcerer in
a forest, weaving and multiplying his spells, once recited to me the
short prayer he had composed for grace to enable him to rear his
children in the best way:

"Monseigneur Saint Louis, Messire Duguesclin, Messire Bayard, help
me to make my sons brave and truthful."

So was Georges Guynemer reared, in the cult of truth, and taught that to
deceive is to lower oneself. Even in his infancy he was already as proud
as any personage. His early years were protected by the gentle and
delicate care of his mother and his two sisters, who hung adoringly over
him and were fascinated by his strange black eyes. What was to become of
a child whose gaze was difficult to endure, and whose health was so
fragile, for when only a few months old he had almost died of infantile
enteritis. His parents had been obliged to carry him hastily to
Switzerland, and then to Hyères, and to keep him in an atmosphere like
that of a hothouse. Petted and spoiled, tended by women, like Achilles
at Scyros among the daughters of Lycomedes, would he not bear all his
life the stamp of too softening an education? Too pretty and too frail,
with his curls and his dainty little frock, he had an _air de
princesse_. His father felt that a mistake was being made, and that this
excess of tenderness must be promptly ended. He took the child on his
knees; a scene as trifling as it was decisive was about to be enacted:

"I almost feel like taking you with me, where I am going."