But when Guynemer added another exploit to his account, the trenches exulted, and counted over again all his feats.
He himself, from his height, looked down in the most friendly way upon these troglodytes who followed him with their eyes. One day when somebody reproached him with running useless risks in aërial acrobatic turns, he replied simply:
"After certain victories it is quite impossible not to pirouette a bit, one is so happy!"
This is the spirit of youth. "They jest and play with death as they played in school only yesterday at recreation."[3] But Guynemer immediately added:
"It gives so much pleasure to the poilus watching us down there."[4]
[3] Henri Lavedan (L'Illustration of October 6, 1917).
[4] Pierre l'Ermite (La Croix of October 7, 1917).
The sky-juggler was working for his brother the infantryman. As the singing lark lifts the peasant's head, bent over his furrow, so the conquering airplane, with its overturnings, its "loopings," its close veerings, its spirals, its tail spins, its "zooms," its dives, all its tricks of flight, amuses for a while the sad laborers in the trenches.
May my readers, when they have finished this little book, composed according to the rules of the boy, Paul Bailly, lift their heads and seek in the sky whither he carried, so often and so high, the tricolor of France, an invisible and immortal Guynemer!