d'Azy, the Dupré de Saint-Maur, the Cochin, de Songis, du Trémoul and Vasselin families, who have left memories of many exemplary legal careers passed in Paris. His son, who wept yesterday as a child weeps before the tomb of such a father, is the new Sub-Prefect of Saverne, the young and laborious administrator who, from the beginning, won our gratitude and friendship.

The story of the escape from Spain contributes another page to the family traditions. The young Spanish girl had sent the prisoner a silken cord concealed in a pie. A fourth companion in captivity was unfortunately too large to pass through the vent-hole of the prison, and was shot by the English. It was August 31, 1813, after the passage of the Bidassoa, that Lieutenant Achille Guynemer was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor. He was then twenty-one years of age. His greatgrandson, who resembled the portraits of Achille (especially a drawing done in 1807), at least in the proud carriage of the head, was to receive the Cross at an even earlier age.

There were other epic souvenirs which awakened Georges Guynemer's curiosity in childhood. He was shown the sword and snuffbox of General Count de Songis, brother of his paternal grandmother. This sword of honor had been presented to the general by the Convention when he was merely a captain of artillery, for having saved the cannon of the fortress at Valenciennes,—though it is quite true that Dumouriez, for the same deed, wished to have him hanged. The snuffbox was given him by the Emperor for having commanded the passage of the Rhine during the Ulm campaign.

Achille Guynemer had two sons. The elder, Amédée, a graduate of the École polytechnique, died at the age of thirty and left no children. The second, Auguste, was Sub-Prefect of Saverne under the Second Empire; and, resigning this office after the war of 1870, he became Vice-President of the society for the protection of Alsatians and Lorrainers, the President of which was the Count d'Haussonville. He had married a young Scottish lady, Miss Lyon, whose family included the Earls of Strathmore, among whose titles were those of Glamis and Cawdor mentioned by Shakespeare in "Macbeth."

As we have already seen, only one of the four sons of the President of Mayence—the hero of the Bidassoa—had left descendants. His son is M. Paul Guynemer, former officer and historian of the Cartulaire de Royallieu and of the Seigneurie d'Offémont, whose only son was the aviator. The race whose history is lost far back in the Chanson de Roland and the Crusades, which settled in Flanders, and then in Brittany, but became, as soon as it left the provinces for the capital, nomadic, changing its base at will from the garrison of the officer to that of the official, seems to have narrowed and refined its stock and condensed all the power of its past, all its hopes for the future, in one last offshoot.

There are some plants, like the aloe, which bear but one flower, and sometimes only at the end of a hundred years. They prepare their sap, which has waited so long, and then from the heart of the plant issues a long straight stem, like a tree whose regular branches look like forged iron. At the top of this stem opens a marvelous flower, which is moist and seems to drop tears upon the leaves, inviting them to share its grief for the doom it awaits. When the flower is withered, the miracle is never renewed.

Guynemer is the flower of an old French family. Like so many other heroes, like so many peasants who, in this Great War, have been the wheat of the nation, his own acts have proved his nobility. But the fairy sent to preside at his birth laid in his cradle certain gilded pages of the finest history in the world: Roland, the Crusades, Brittany and Duguesclin, the Empire, and Alsace.

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:

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."

"Where are you going, father?"

"There, where I am going, there are only men."

"I want to go with you."

The father seemed to hesitate, and then to decide:

"After all, too early is better than too late. Put on your hat. I shall take you." He took him to the hairdresser.

"I am going to have my hair cut. How do you feel about it?"

"I want to do like men."

The child was set upon a stool where, in the white combing-cloth, with his curly hair, he resembled an angel done by an Italian Primitive. For an instant the father thought himself a barbarian, and the barber hesitated, scissors in air, as before a crime. They exchanged glances; then the father stiffened and gave the order. The beautiful curls fell.

But now it became necessary to return home; and when his mother saw him, she wept.

"I am a man," the child announced, peremptorily.

He was indeed to be a man, but he was to remain for a long time also a mischievous boy—nearly, in fact, until the end.

When he was six or seven years old he began to study with the teacher of his sisters, which was convenient and agreeable, but meant the addition of another petticoat. The fineness of his feelings, his fear of having wounded any comrade, which were later to inspire him in so many touching actions, were the result of this feminine education. His walks with his father, who already gave him much attention, brought about useful reactions. Compiègne is rich in the history of the past: kings were crowned there, and kings died there. The Abbey of Saint Cornille sheltered, perhaps, the holy winding-sheet of Christ. Treaties were signed at Compiègne, and there magnificent fêtes were given by Louis XIV, Louis XV, Napoleon I, and Napoleon III. And even in 1901 the child met Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra, who were staying there. So, the palace and the forest spoke to him of a past which his father could explain. And on the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville he was much interested in the bronze statue of the young girl, bearing a banner.

"Who is it?"

"Jeanne d'Arc."

Georges Guynemer's parents renounced the woman teacher, and in order to keep him near them, entered him as a day scholar at the lyceum of Compiègne. Here the child worked very little. M. Paul Guynemer, having been educated at Stanislas College, in Paris, wished his son also to go there. Georges was then twelve years old.

"In a photograph of the