Chapter I

"We will continue the course of instruction of which you have studied at present only the first page; I am going into very minute detail, as you see.

"Our scholar now knows the different positions, and can appreciate why they are to be commended, and what is to be gained by adopting them. At the next lesson,--and each lesson would consist of not more than three bouts of eight or ten minutes each,--I should show him and make him execute the simple attacks and the simple parries:--_Disengagements in tierce and quarte, straight thrusts, the cut over, and parries of quarte and tierce._ The attacks will exercise him in the lunge, the parries will improve the flexibility of his wrist.

"I should make him continually retire and advance. I should, even at this early stage, take pains to secure a certain degree of life and speed in his execution, and I should be careful to vary the exercises, and never appeal to his intelligence at the risk of checking the activity of his movements. Sluggishness, I repeat, is a deadly foe, against which every avenue must be closed from the very first.

"Next I should go on to composite parries and composite attacks. I have already named them, and you remember that they are not very numerous. _Counters_, _double counters_, and combinations of the _cut over_ and _disengagement_ are the most useful things to practise, because they work the wrist in every direction, and make it both quick and supple.

"Although a great many instructors would say that I am wrong, I should make it my principal aim to form and cultivate a habit of executing all movements at speed. I should insist less on precision of control than on smartness of execution, and at the same time I should call my pupil's attention to the mistakes which he must be most careful to avoid, and to the points of danger where he must exercise the greatest caution.

"I should practise him in retiring quickly, and should make him deliver simple attacks on the march, keeping his blade in position. After a few lessons I should repeatedly place my button on his jacket, if he did not parry quickly enough, or if he was slow on the recovery. In a word I should put plenty of life and go into my lessons from the first, and not allow them to become tedious.

"After every lesson I should direct his serious attention to the principal faults I had noticed, and I should make him understand the dangers to which these faults must inevitably expose him. For instance, if he caught the fatal trick of dropping or drawing back his hand, I should take care to make him attack and riposte in the high lines, in order to get him to carry his wrist high, and vice versa. In this way I should exercise his judgment by making him think, and his hand and body by keeping him closely to his work.

II.

"Above all, the master's lesson must not lose itself in a maze of attacks and parries and ripostes, which in some treatises are as numerous and interminable as the stars of heaven. The strict limitation of the number of strokes to be taught renders their execution proportionately easier, and makes a clear impression on the mind. Experience and fencing instinct teach, far better than any lesson, certain niceties, which give life and finish and character to the play. There you have the lesson complete.

"As the scholar gradually grows stronger, he learns to hold himself correctly, and acquires ease. He understands what to do without being told, and his hand is in a fair way to become the faithful echo of his thought.