The writers of antiquity have mourned in touching accents the loss of young men cut down in the flower of their youth. "The city," sighs Pericles, "has lost its light, the year has lost its spring." Theocritus and Ovid in turn lament the short life of Adonis, whose blood was changed into flowers. And in Virgil the father of the gods, whom Pallas supplicates before facing Turnus, warns him not to confound the beauty of life with its length: Stat sua cuique dies; breve et irreparabile tempus Omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis, Hoc virtutis opus. . . "The days of man are numbered, and his life-time short and irrecoverable; but to increase his renown by the quality of his acts, this is the work of virtue...."[1] [Footnote 1: _AEneid_, Book 10, Garnier ed.] _Famam extendere factis_: no fabulous personage of antiquity made more haste than Guynemer to multiply the exploits that increased his glory. But the enumeration of these would not furnish a key to his life, nor explain either that secret power he possessed or the fascination he exerted. "It is not always the most brilliant actions which best expose the virtues or vices of men. Some trifle, some insignificant word or jest, often displays the character better than bloody combats, pitched battles, or the taking of cities. Also, as portrait painters try to reproduce the features and expression of their subjects, as the most obvious presentment of their characters, and without troubling about the other parts of the body, so we may be allowed to concentrate our study upon the distinctive signs of the soul...."[2] [Footnote 2: Plutarch, _Life of Alexander_.] I, then, shall especially seek out these "distinctive signs of the soul."