returning from a promenade. In more than a hundred combats his airplane received only three very small wounds. His cleverness in handling his machine was incredible: his close veering, his twistings and turnings, made it impossible for the adversary to shoot. He also knew how to quit the combat in time, if his own maneuvers had not succeeded. He seemed invulnerable. But later, much later, while he was fighting on the Aisne in May, 1917, Dorme, who had penetrated far within the enemy's lines, never came back. [Illustration: IN THE AIR] Was Heurtaux the greatest, whose method was as delicate as himself--a virtuoso of the air, clever, supple and quickwitted, whose hand and eye equaled his thought in rapidity? Was it Deullin, skilled in approach, and prompt as the tempest? Or the long-enduring, robust, admirable _sous-lieutenant_ Nungessor, or Sergeant Sauvage, or Adjutant Tarascon? Was it Captain Menard, or Sangloer, or de la Tour? But the reader knows very well that it was Guynemer. Why was it Guynemer, according to the testimony of all his rivals? History and the epic have coupled many names of friends, like Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes and Pylades, Nisus and Euryalus, Roland and Oliver. In these friendships, one is always surpassed by the other, but not in intelligence, nor courage nor nobility of character. For generosity, or wisdom of council, one might even prefer a Patroclus to an Achilles, an Oliver to a Roland. In what, then, lies the superiority? That is the secret of temperament, the secret of genius, the interior flame which burns the brightest, and whose appearances cause astonishment and almost terror, as if some mystery were divulged.