“Well,” I began, “hitherto we have had in view sword-play in the literal sense of the word, that is to say theoretical fencing, fencing regarded as a sport, as a bout with the foils in a fencing room. We shall now have to consider it from the strictly utilitarian standpoint.
“In the one case we have an assault, consisting of a succession of fancy strokes played by connoisseurs, who in point of skill may of course be equally or unequally matched, but who nevertheless play the game on the whole in accordance with principles that are tolerably well ascertained. In the other case we have a serious encounter with swords sharply pointed, flashing in the sun, and dangerous to life. The first hit, correct or incorrect, is decisive, no matter how it is delivered, no matter where.
“Do not forget that you have to reckon not only with skill but with the possibility of surprise, not only with subtlety but with brute force, not only with science but with blind and headlong ignorance. Your opponent does not greatly care whether he lets your blood in orthodox style, or whether he operates on your face for instance, or on those parts of the body that are too much neglected in the fencing room. You do not choose your opponent, he is chosen for you by accident; he may be tall or short, strong or weak. You are no longer engaged in a sport in which your object is to play correctly, in a contest of skill in which you may perhaps allow yourself to be hit occasionally in order to lead your opponent on and afterwards defeat him more easily. The man who confronts you with that threatening point may be an artistic and accomplished swordsman, but he may equally well never have touched a sword in his life, and be trusting to luck, or to his general smartness, or to a cool head. You may find that you have to do with an enemy whose every movement is studied; who keeps his distance cleverly; who never advances or retires without a reason. Or on the contrary, it may turn out that your opponent, trusting to one supreme effort of audacity, in defiance of all calculation, and throwing to the wind every shred of theory, will make such brutal use of his sword as the primitive and untutored instinct of self-preservation dictates.
V.
“We realise at once how far we have got from the harmless diversion of the assault, the sham fight conducted under the master’s eye on strictly correct principles and with inoffensive weapons. The assault and the duel are even further apart than the assault and the formal lesson. In short this newspaper paragraph has brought us face to face with the real duel, and what we have to do is to discuss it in all its bearings,—so we had better begin at the beginning.
“Unfortunately, one always finds that it is impossible to discuss the art of fence without coming to the duel; for say what you will, cases must sometimes occur when an affront for which the law offers no redress compels you to go out. ‘The duel,’ as someone puts it, ‘cannot be suppressed. It is like a bad neighbour with whom we have to live on the best terms we can.’
“Some years ago I happened to read a great deal of fencing literature. The various authors, though not one of them could find a good word to say for duelling, contrived between them to fill in a sketch of its rise and progress from the earliest times down to the present day.
“This is evidently one of the points where the civilised man and the savage meet on common ground, and is an instance of the law that civilisation modifies, refines, perhaps transforms our instincts, dresses or disguises them in the latest fashion, but never gets rid of them.
“At one time the duel was called Trial by Battle or simply The Judicial Combat. Then it was pronounced illegal, and those who fought in a private quarrel were sentenced either to death or to long and cruel periods of imprisonment.
“At a later period, growing insolent with impunity, the duel like a strayed reveller swaggered in the streets and public places; we find it haunting the taverns, we see the flicker of the blades under a street lamp,—drawn for a word, for a ribbon, for a bet, for anything, or for nothing. Even the seconds who parted good friends over-night did their best to spit each other next morning.