But the poet was occasionally at a loss, for, as
Theodore de Banville observes in his _Petit traite de Poesie Francaise_,
"everybody has not a prince handy to whom to dedicate his _ballade_."
Guynemer's biography is of such a nature that it must seem like a poem:
why not, then, conclude it with an _envoi_? I have no difficulty in
finding a Prince, for I shall select him from among the French
schoolboys. There is a little Paul Bailly, not quite twelve years old,
from Bouclans, a village in Franche-Comte, who wrote a beautiful theme
on Guynemer: he shall be my Prince. And through him I shall address all
the French schoolboys or girls, in all the French towns and villages.
Little Prince, I have no doubt that you love arithmetic, and I will give
you accurate figures which will satisfy your taste. You will like to
know that Guynemer flew for 665 hours and 55 seconds in all, which I
added up from his flying notebooks: his last flight is not recorded in
them, because it never stopped.
As for the number of fights in which he was engaged, that is difficult
to ascertain. Guynemer himself did not seem anxious to be sure about it.
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