IV.
“Do you follow the distinction? A time thrust is taken on the final movement of an attack, when you think you know exactly what is coming, and can judge with certainty in what line the point will be delivered. Very well, then parry instead of timing; for if you are wrong—and who is not sometimes?—you can at any rate have recourse to another parry. Whereas the time thrust, when misjudged, results in a mutual hit, and for one that is good tender how much base metal you will put into circulation. The stop thrust, which is taken, as I have said, on the opponent’s advance, is less dangerous. Therefore never attack a man, who straightens his arm on every occasion, without making sure of his blade, and you need have no fear of the result.
“It is quite true that the practice of straightening the arm is much more prevalent than it used to be; simply because this style of play, which is of great antiquity, had gone out of fashion, and given place to another method, which in its turn was overdone,—the method of feints and flourishes.
“So too, the trick of reversing the lunge by throwing back the left foot and dropping the body, to allow the attack to pass over your head, is not an invention of the ‘Romantic’ school, as it has been ridiculously christened. It is an old trick, a ruse of great antiquity, which may or at all events ought to be found in Homer. Still, unless your opponent drives you to it by wild and frantic rushes, it is a stroke to be used sparingly, and with the object of letting him know that you are ready to receive him. By this means you will stop him from rushing at you on every possible occasion. I like to see a stop thrust correctly taken, always provided that I do not see others in the course of the same assault taken incorrectly,—for then it is obvious that the correct thrust was a simple fluke.