"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.