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.