nt chez mon pere.

Those who never saw Guynemer at his father's at Compiegne cannot know
him well. Of course, even in camp he was the best of comrades, full of
his work, but always ready to enjoy somebody else's success, and
speaking about his own as if it were billiards or bridge. His renown
had not intoxicated him, and he would have been quite unconscious of it
had he not sometimes felt that unresponsiveness on the part of others
which is the price of glory: anything like jealousy hurt him as if it
had been his first discovery of evil. In Kipling's _Jungle Book_,
Mowgli, the man cub, noticing that the Jungle hates him, feels his eyes
and is frightened at finding them wet. "What is this, Bagheera?" he asks
of his friend the panther. "Oh, nothing; only tears," answers Bagheera,
who had lived among men.

One who, on occasion, told Guynemer _not to mind_ knows how deep was his
sensitiveness, not to the presence of real hostility, which he
fortunately never encountered, but even to an obscure germ of jealousy.
The moment he felt this he shrank into himself. His native exuberance
only displayed itself under the influence of sympathy.

Friendship among airmen is manly and almost rough, not caring for
formulas or appearances, but proving itself by deeds. To these men the
games of war are astonishingly like school games, and are spoken of as
if they were nothing else. When a comrade has not come back, and dinner
has to begin without him, no show of sorrow is tolerated: only these
young men's hearts feel the absence of a friend, and the casual visitor,
not knowing, might take them for sporting men, lively and jolly.

Guynemer was living his life in perfect confidence, feeling no personal
ambition, not inclined to enjoy honors more than work, ignoring all
affectation or attitudinizing, never politic, and naturally unconscious
of his own simplicity. Yet he loved and adored what we call glory, and
would tell anybody of his successes, even of his decorations, with a
childlike certitude that these things must delight others as much as
himself. His French honors were of course his great pride, but he highly
appreciated those which he had received from allied governments, too:
the Distinguished Service order, the Cross of St. George, the Cross of
Leopold, the Belgian war medal, Serbian and Montenegrin orders, etc. All
these ribbons made a bright show, and although he generally wore only
the _rosette_ of the Legion of Honor, he woul