“I might revenge myself for the trouble I have taken to ransack these ancient folios, by inflicting upon you any number of quotations, but I will be merciful, and am content to have demonstrated that the ideas that are supposed to be most radical are often, when they come to be examined, most truly conservative.”
III.
“I have another question for you,” continued the Comte de R. “You were speaking the other day of feints and stop thrusts. Of course it was ridiculous to expect an opponent to follow every gyration, which you chose to describe with the point of your sword, but don’t you think that nowadays the practice of straightening the arm on every possible occasion is utterly overdone?”
“No doubt it is by some men—overdone, or rather very badly done, which amounts to the same thing. ‘Ne quid nimis’ you know is a good motto, and I quite agree with you, however little you may like it, that this movement, which comes more by instinct than by intention, is now the refuge of those who cannot parry; but, mind this, it is a refuge, from which it is often very difficult to dislodge them. I quite admit that those who straighten the arm without any justification are hopelessly unscientific, but they present a difficulty to surmount, which requires serious attention.
“Let me explain before going on. There is a distinction to be made between stop thrusts, and time thrusts. The stop thrust is taken, when your opponent advances incautiously, or when he draws back his arm while executing a complicated attack, whenever in fact he makes a movement which leaves him exposed. The time thrust on the other hand, correctly speaking, is a parry of opposition,—the most dangerous of all parries, for if it fails it leaves you absolutely exposed and at the mercy of your opponent. I have seen it taught in the lesson by every master (as an exercise no doubt), but I have hardly ever seen a master put it into practice in the assault. The thrust has nothing to recommend it, but on the contrary it is to be condemned on many grounds. I should like to see it ignominiously expelled from the fencing room, as the buyers and sellers were expelled from the temple.
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.