The reading of this paragraph was followed by a momentary silence. Then someone remarked:—“I have often heard ‘secret thrusts’ spoken of, but how is it that they are not taught by the Professors?”
“Well,” I said smiling, “for one sufficient reason, that if they were taught they would no longer be secret. But, joking apart, I may as well say at once that my belief in secret thrusts is about equal to my belief in ghosts.”
“Come, this must be looked into.”
“I believe in out of the way and unlooked for strokes, but further than that I cannot go.”
“Yet, surely they must have existed some time or other,” objected my critic, “or how did they come by their name?”
“Oh, they existed more or less at one time, or perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say that they were supposed to exist. They are a shadowy survival, a sort of family ghost that we have inherited from the Italian school. For French fencing, though it has developed characteristic features of its own, traces its descent, as you know, in a direct line from Italian ancestry.
“Secret thrusts died and were buried when Science was in its infancy; and Science has since grown up in other conditions, and grown strong by working on other lines. They could not be revived, unless the attendant ritual of an effete tradition, the system of a bygone age long since forgotten, were revived along with them.
“At the present day, with our modern weapons and our modern methods, to use a secret thrust would amount almost to a crime. And if it were not exactly that, if a charge of murder or manslaughter would not lie, it certainly would be considered iniquitous by all honourable men. No one with a conscience could conceivably buy success in an affair of honour at such a price.