t's the news?" "Nothing, no news. Oh! I beg your
pardon, people say that Napoleon has died at St. Helena." Work stops at
once, and the peasants look at one another in silence. But one fellow
standing on the rick says: "Napoleon dead! psha! it's plain those people
don't know him!" The journalist added that he heard a speech of the same
kind in the bush-region of Aveyron. A passenger on the motor-bus read in
a newspaper the news of Guynemer's death; everybody seemed dismayed. The
chauffeur alone smiled skeptically as he examined the spark plugs of his
engine. When he had done, he pulled down the hood, put away his
spectacles, carefully wiped his dirty hands on a cloth still dirtier,
and planting himself in front of the passenger said: "Very well. I tell
you that the man who is to down Guynemer is still an apprentice. Do you
understand?..."

The credulity of the poor people of France with regard to their hero was
most touching. When the death of Guynemer had to be admitted, there was
deep mourning, from Paris to the remote villages where news travels
slowly, but is long pondered upon. Guynemer had been brought down from a
height of 700 meters, northeast of Poelkapelle cemetery, in the Ypres
sector. A German noncommissioned officer and two soldiers had
immediately gone to where the machine was lying. One of the wings of the
machine was broken; the airman had been shot through the head, and his
leg and shoulder had been broken in the fall; but his face was
untouched, and he had been identified at once by the photograph on his
pilot's diploma. A military funeral had been given to him.

Nevertheless, it seemed as if Guynemer's fate still remained somewhat
obscure. The German War Office published a list of French machines
fallen in the German lines, with the official indications by which they
had been recognized. Now, the number of the _Vieux-Charles_ did not
appear on any of these lists, although having only one wing broken the
number ought to have been plainly visible. Who were the noncommissioned
officer and the two soldiers? Finally, on October 4, 1917, the British
took Poelkapelle, but the enemy counter-attacked, and there was furious
fighting. On the 9th the village was completely occupied by the British,
and they searched for Guynemer's grave. No trace of it could be found in
either the military or the village graveyard.

In fact, the Germans had to acknowledge in an official document that
both the body and the airplan