V.
“I am speaking now from the scientific standpoint. Perhaps I can put my point more clearly. If my opponent says:—‘I don’t profess to be scientific; I simply defend myself by the light of nature,’ he may do what he likes, I shall not complain of his mistakes; he is perfectly within his rights and knows no better. But the expert fencer has no business to make mistakes, or at least he should try to avoid them as far as he can.
“Even at the risk of being lynched for my unorthodox opinions, I should venture to say to the would-be fencer:—‘Above all things make yourself dangerous. Be ‘a difficult fencer,’ since that is the stereotyped phrase. Without it there is no salvation; your guns are not shotted, your performance is mere fire-works.’
“But be careful not to give these words a wider application than they are meant to carry. All that I would say is this:—that you are to follow your natural instinct, to trust your impulse, to be yourself and not your master’s puppet. I do not mean to propound an acrobatic theory of fencing, or to recommend a meaningless, objectless, indiscriminate charging about, like the convulsive struggles of a wild beast, that has received its death wound. It would be as wrong to take such extravagant exceptions for your model, as it would be unfair to argue from them in order to demonstrate the futility of the new school.
“No doubt fencers of this kind,—they call themselves fencers,—may score an occasional hit, for, as I have had occasion to remark already, there is always a certain amount of luck in fencing; but this sort of thing is not fencing; it is much more like mere brutal fisticuffs. Such eccentric methods are of no importance, they are not based on any sort of principle, but are the mere outcome of ignorance; they belong to no school and have no permanent value. But it does not do to despise an unbeaten enemy. Therefore confront these methods and defeat them first; you can afford to despise them afterwards.”
“Quite so,” exclaimed Monsieur de C., “that is exactly my opinion.”
“One moment,” I said, “I have not quite done. I was going to say, that I have very little faith in the stories one hears of the regimental fencing master being run through by the recruit. Such an event may happen, just as a chimney-pot may fall on your head when you are walking in the street, but I fancy that if you were to apply the rule of three to all the cases the result would not exactly support the paradox.
“There is a class of fencers who are thoroughly—in fact too thoroughly—convinced that they are very dangerous fellows, and that they are never hit. You repeatedly come across this sort of thing in the fencing room:—Your opponent delivers an attack which you parry; he stays on the lunge doubled up, with his body dropped forward; your riposte lands perhaps in his mask, perhaps in his back, or arm. Thereupon he recovers and remarks with a negligent air: ‘hit in the mask,’ ‘hit in the back,’ ‘arm only,’ as the case may be.
“Oh, only in the mask! But, Sir, the point would have run you through the head and traversed your brain. In fact it would have been quite as effective as a hit in the chest, which penetrated your lungs. The other would have gone six inches into your back; while the third would have pierced your arm and run you through the chest afterwards. You offer your head, back, or arm instead of your chest, I hit the part exposed and am quite satisfied. You cannot evade or parry a thrust by substituting for the part that would otherwise be hit some other part, which you do not attempt to cover; all that you do is to offer an exchange.