Next day he made his _debut_ at the aviation camp at Pau as student mechanician. He had entered the army by the back door, but he had got in. The future knight of the air was now the humblest of grooms. "I do not ask any favors for him," his father wrote to the captain. "All I ask is that he may perform any services he is capable of." He had to be tried and proved deserving, to pass through all the minor ranks before being worthy to wear the _casque sacre_. The petted child of Compiegne and the Villa Delphine had the most severe of apprenticeships. He slept on the floor, and was employed in the dirtiest work about camp, cleaned cylinders and carried cans of petroleum. In this _milieu_ he heard words and theories which dumbfounded him, not knowing then that men frequently do not mean all that they say. On November 26, he wrote Abbe Chesnais: "I have the pleasure of informing you that after two postponements during a vain effort to enlist, I have at last succeeded. _Time and patience_ ... I am writing you in the mess, while two comrades are elaborating social theories...." Would he be able to endure this workman's existence? His parents were not without anxiety. They hesitated to leave Biarritz and return to their home in Compiegne in the rue Saint-Lazare, on the edge of the forest. But, so far from being injured by manual labor, the child constantly grew stronger. In his case spirit had always triumphed over matter, and compelled it to obedience on every occasion. So now he followed his own object with indomitable energy. He took an airplane to pieces before mounting in it, and learned to know it in every detail.