Though hampered by illness and enforced vacations, Guynemer graduated from Stanislas College in his fifteenth year with honors. In the autumn he re-entered the school for a further course of study. His leisure hours were passed installing miniature telephones, and experimenting with paper airplane models. His ability for invention and mechanics was marked. All the sciences held interest for him, but he had special liking for chemistry and mathematics. He was fond of reading, but his choice of books fell solely on those that dealt with war, chivalry and adventure. One of young Guynemer’s intimates was Jean Krebs, whose father was a pioneer in the development of aerostatics and aviation. He was then director of the great Panhard automobile works, and on Sundays the two youths spent hours studying motor parts. With their fellow students at the college they were often taken to visit technical establishments after school. Georges was always to be found beside the one that explained the operations of the machinery. When they were permitted to attend automobile and airplane exhibitions, his delight was boundless. Keen, excited, agitated, he passed from one exhibit to another, commenting, interrogating, and incidentally filling his pockets with catalogues and pamphlets about the different makes of cars and planes. While still at school he fashioned a small airplane, which he launched with glee over the heads of his companions. At that time (1910), the eyes of Europe were on the sky. Blériot had crossed the Channel; Paulhan had soared to a record height of over four thousand feet. It was the ambition of all French youth to fly. With Guynemer the desire was an obsession. From the aerodrome near Compiègne he secretly made his first flight, crouched behind an obliging pilot, cramped and uncomfortable, but ecstatically happy. So determined was he to follow the profession of the air that pleasures of world travel, enjoyed for months in the fond companionship of his mother and sisters, served in no way to distract him from his purpose. “What career shall you adopt?” his father inquired, when they returned. And Georges answered, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “I shall be an aviator.” His parent protested that aviation was not a career, but a sport. The boy was obstinate. He confessed that his life was already dedicated to this passion. That on the morning he had first seen a birdman fly above the college of Stanislas, he had been possessed by a sensation he could not explain. “I felt an emotion so deep it seemed sacred,” he told his father. “I knew then that I must ask you to let me become an aviator.”