At dinner a heavy melancholy weighed upon them. Guynemer's seat was empty, and no one dreamed of taking it. One officer tried to dispel the cloud by suggesting hypotheses. Guynemer was lucky, had always been; probably he was alive, a prisoner. Guynemer a prisoner!... He had said one day with a laugh, "The Boches will never get me alive," but his laugh was terrible. No, Guynemer could not have been taken prisoner. Where was he, then? On the squadron log, _sous-lieutenant_ Bozon-Verduraz wrote that evening as follows: _Tuesday, September 11, 1917._ Patrolled. Captain Guynemer started at 8.25 with _sous-lieutenant_ Bozon-Verduraz. Found missing after an engagement with a biplane above Poelkapelle (Belgium). That was all. IV. THE VIGIL Before Guynemer, other knights of the air, other aces, had been reported missing or had perished--some like Captain Le Cour Grandmaison or Captain Auger in our lines, others like Sergeant Sauvage and _sous-lieutenant_ Dorme in the enemy's. In fact, he would be the thirteenth on the list if the title of ace is reserved for aviators to whom the controlling board has given its vise for five undoubted victories. These were the names: Captain Le Cour Grandmaison 5 victories Sergeant Hauss 5 " _sous-lieutenant_ Delorme 5 " _sous-lieutenant_ Pegoud 6 " _sous-lieutenant_ Languedoc 7 " Captain Auger 7 " Captain Doumer 7 " _sous-lieutenant_ Rochefort 7 " Sergeant Sauvage 8 " Captain Matton 9 " Adjutant Lenoir 11 " _sous-lieutenant_ Dorme 23 " Would Guynemer's friends now have to add: Captain Guynemer, 53? Nobody dared to do so, yet nobody now dared hope. A poet of genius, who even before the war had been an aviator, Gabriele d'Annunzio, has described in his novel, _Forse che si forse che no_, the friendship of two young men, Paolo Tarsis and Giulio Cambasio, whose mutual affection, arising from a similar longing to conquer the sky, has grown in the perils they dare together. If this book had been written later, war would have intensified its meaning. Instead of dying in a fight, Cambasio is killed in a contest for altitude between Bergamo and the Lake of Garda. As Achilles watched beside the dead body of Patroclus, so Tarsis would not leave to another the guarding of his lost friend: