"You don't know what an airplane is. You never saw one except from
below."

"You are mistaken; I went up in one at Corbeaulieu."

Corbeaulieu was an aërodrome near Compiègne; and these words were spoken
a very few months before the war.

* * * * *

Many years before Georges Guynemer was a student at Stanislas, a
professor, who was also destined to become famous, taught rhetoric
there. His name was Frédéric Ozanam. He too had been a precocious child,
prematurely sure of his vocation for literature. When only fifteen he
had composed in Latin verse an epitaph in honor of Gaston de Foix, dead
at Ravenna. This epitaph, if two words are changed--_Hispanae_ into
_hostilis_, and _Gaston_ into _Georges_--describes perfectly the short
and admirable career of Guynemer. Even the palms are included:

Fortunate heros! moriendo in saecula vives.
Eia, agite, o socii, manibus profundite flores,
Lilia per tumulum, violamque rosamque recentem
Spargite; victricis armis superaddite lauros,
Et tumulo tales mucrone inscribite voces:
Hic jacet hostilis gentis timor et decus omne
Gallorum, Georgius, conditus ante diem:
Credidit hunc Lachesis juvenem dum cerneret annos,
Sed palmas numerans credidit esse senem.[12]