I.
“You asked me yesterday, if it is allowable to use the unarmed hand to parry and put aside the sword.
“My answer is very emphatic:—No.”
“But what if the parties agree to allow it beforehand?” asked the Marquis de R....
“That is an agreement which in my opinion ought not to be made. The practice is wholly foreign to our ways and to the traditions that have come down to us.
“I am fully aware of the fact that there is the authority of a very profound writer, the Comte de Chatauvillard, who has many strong supporters, for the statement that ‘the parry with the hand may be a matter of agreement.’ And other writers, among whom is more than one eminent master, may be quoted for the view that it is a proper matter for arrangement between the contending parties. That does not affect my opinion in the least; and I say very emphatically and very distinctly:—As you clearly have the right to say yes or no, say no invariably.
“Such a concession or such an agreement, even if it is freely entered upon by both sides, is only too likely to lead to disastrous and fatal mistakes, while it does not offer any counterbalancing advantage. I will try to explain why.
“The parry made with the hand that does not hold the sword goes back to the ancient traditions of the Italian school, to the methods in vogue when men fought with sword and dagger. They parried and attacked with either weapon indifferently, bringing one or other into play by voltes and passes, which have been dismissed from the theory and practice of modern fencing. The art, which was adapted in those days to the double means of offence and defence, employed a system very different from that which prevails now. This parry, or to speak more accurately this method of diverting an opponent’s blade, which was done with either hand indifferently, was reasonable then; nowadays it would be a fantastic and dangerous anomaly.
“I remember trying by way of experiment, some years ago at Naples, several assaults of this sort with an Italian professor, named Parisi.—The poor fellow died I believe in prison, after taking part in one of the many revolutionary attempts that were made to wreck the kingdom of Naples. Parisi used to come regularly to my house where I had furnished a room for fencing. I wished to make a serious study of Italian play, and of the surviving traditions of this school, which is rapidly disappearing and is only connected with its past by a few almost invisible threads.
“Well, Parisi used to fence with a long Italian sword in one hand, and in the other a sort of stiletto, which he employed to parry my attacks in certain lines; and while he thus stopped my attack with his dagger, he made not exactly a riposte but rather a simultaneous counter-attack on me with his sword. This kind of play, which continually produced new and difficult situations, was very interesting.
“If Parisi dropped his dagger, what happened? His left hand, instead of following my blade, sprang at once to a fixed position. And to what position? Why, you could see at a glance, by the way he carried his forearm, thrown rather high across his chest and only a few inches away from it, that he was ready for the parry with the hand, in fact doubly ready for it, both by the position of his body and by the forward position of his left arm.
“Now we who follow the rules of French fencing do just the reverse. We carry our left arm to the rear, and so leave a smaller surface exposed to our opponent’s point; we therefore cannot bring our left hand into play without abandoning the French position, or at all events without sacrificing some of its fundamental principles.