When he was six or seven years old he began to study with the teacher of
his sisters, which was convenient and agreeable, but meant the addition
of another petticoat. The fineness of his feelings, his fear of having
wounded any comrade, which were later to inspire him in so many touching
actions, were the result of this feminine education. His walks with his
father, who already gave him much attention, brought about useful
reactions. Compiègne is rich in the history of the past: kings were
crowned there, and kings died there. The Abbey of Saint Cornille
sheltered, perhaps, the holy winding-sheet of Christ. Treaties were
signed at Compiègne, and there magnificent fêtes were given by Louis
XIV, Louis XV, Napoleon I, and Napoleon III. And even in 1901 the child
met Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra, who were staying there. So, the
palace and the forest spoke to him of a past which his father could
explain. And on the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville he was much interested in
the bronze statue of the young girl, bearing a banner.

"Who is it?"

"Jeanne d'Arc."

Georges Guynemer's parents renounced the woman teacher, and in order to
keep him near them, entered him as a day scholar at the lyceum of
Compiègne. Here the child worked very little. M. Paul Guynemer, having
been educated at Stanislas College, in Paris, wished his son also to go
there. Georges was then twelve years old.

"In a photograph of the pupils of the Fifth (green) Class," wrote a
journalist in the _Journal des Débats_, who had had the curiosity to
investigate Georges' college days, "may be seen a restless-looking
little boy, thinner and paler than the others, whose round black eyes