"Let us raise our hearts in respectful and grateful admiration for the hero whom the First Army can never forget, of whom it was so proud, and whose memory will always live in History. "Dead though he be, a man like Guynemer guides us, if we know how to follow him, along the triumphal way which, over ruins, tombs, and sacrifices, leads to victory the good and the strong." Of itself, thanks to this religious conclusion of the general's ode, the ceremony had assumed a sort of sacred character, and the word which concludes prayers, the Amen of the officiating priest, naturally came to our lips while the general saluted with his sword the invisible spirit of the hero, and the blasts of the bugles rose above the gale and the sea. VI. IN THE PANTHEON In the Pantheon crypt, destined, as the inscription says, for the burial of great men, the name of Guynemer will be graven on a marble slab cemented in the wall. The proper inscription for this slab will be the young soldier's last citation: FALLEN ON THE FIELD OF HONOR ON SEPTEMBER 11, 1917. A LEGENDARY HERO, FALLEN FROM THE VERY ZENITH OF VICTORY AFTER THREE YEARS' HARD AND CONTINUOUS FIGHTING. HE WILL BE CONSIDERED THE MOST PERFECT EMBODIMENT OF THE NATIONAL QUALITIES FOR HIS INDOMITABLE ENERGY AND PERSEVERANCE AND HIS EXALTED GALLANTRY. FULL OF INVINCIBLE BELIEF IN VICTORY, HE HAS BEQUEATHED TO THE FRENCH SOLDIER AN IMPERISHABLE MEMORY WHICH MUST ADD TO HIS SELF-SACRIFICING SPIRIT AND WILL SURELY GIVE RISE TO THE NOBLEST EMULATION. "To deserve such a citation and die!" exclaimed a young officer after reading it. In his poem, _Le Vol de la Marseillaise_, Rostand shows us the twelve Victories seated at the Invalides around the tomb of the Emperor rising to welcome their sister, the Victory of the Marne. At the Pantheon, in the crypt where they rest, Marshal Lannes and General Marceau, Lazare Carnot, the organizer of victory, and Captain La Tour d'Auvergne will rise in their turn on this young man's entrance. Victor Hugo, who is there too, will recognize at once one of the knights in his _Legende des Siecles_, and Berthelot will look upon his coming as an evidence of the fervor of youth for France as well as for science. But of them all, Marceau, his elder brother, killed at twenty-seven, will be the most welcoming. Traveling in the Rhine Valley some ten or twelve years ago, I made a pilgrimage to Marceau's tomb, outside Coblenz, just above the Moselle. In a little wood stands a black marble pyramid with the following inscription in worn-out gilt letters: Here lieth Marceau, a soldier at sixteen, a general at twenty-two, who died fighting for his country the last day of the year IV of the Republic. Whoever you may be, friend or foe, respect the ashes of this hero.