"It is a good many years since I first took up fencing; I have been
in all the fencing-rooms; I have fenced with many professors and with
all sorts and conditions of amateurs, and no one has ever suggested to
me that we should agree to parry with the hand. I have never, no not
once in all the assaults that I have witnessed, heard such a suggestion
made; I have never seen this kind of parry employed; I have never heard
of a master showing or teaching it to his pupils as a possible case or
even as a highly improbable case, against which it was his duty, as
a wise and experienced professor, to put on their guard those whose
instruction was committed to his care.
"Then why, when the assault ceases to be an exercise or an amusement,
why, when you stake your life upon the issue, should you go out of
your way to suggest or assent to something foreign to all recognised
practice?
"If you approve of the surviving methods of the old Italian school,
you should admit all the precepts of that school, and then you will at
least be logical.
"Your sword will have a long heavy blade, broad and perfectly rigid;
the hilt will be surmounted by a little cross-bar of steel on which
you will place your fingers, and to which you will attach them with
a long ribbon; incidentally you will do away with the freedom of the
hand, the supple action of the wrist and the niceties of finger play.
You will have to make frequent use of parries of contraction, which are
indispensable to Italian play, though they are little valued, not to
say altogether ignored by the French school. You must learn your voltes
and passes, the manoeuvres of ducking and dodging; and then, I repeat,
you will at least be logical. But an agreement which recognises only
one of these practices, while it disregards all the rest, seems to me
absurd.
"Let me now show you the danger, which can hardly be avoided, of
admitting this parry with the left hand.
"Between the open palm, which merely brushes the blade aside, and the
hand, which by a nervous movement closes unconsciously on the blade and
holds it fast, the difference is very hard to seize. The thing is done
in a moment. It passes like a flash in the confusion of the encounter
and leaves no trace behind.
"Without a doubt the man who has unconsciously arrested the blade,
instead of merely turning it aside, will be in despair, and in the
loyalty of his heart will be the first to accuse himself. But if his
point has taken effect, if he has delivered a fatal thrust, will his
despair or regret or any self-reproach heal the wound that he has
inflicted, or restore the life that he has taken? If the odds were a
thousand to one against a fatal issue, that one chance would be enough
to condemn fatally this dangerous agreement.
"Moreover, I may remark, speaking from the experience that is obtained
by long familiarity, and perhaps from some small skill in the practice
of arms, that it is often very difficult, not to say impossible, for
the most practised eye in the confusion of a multitude of thrusts,
swiftly parried and as swiftly returned, to follow with accuracy the
course of two swords, that pass to and fro and interlace like living
things, or to judge with indisputable certainty the difference between
these two movements, one of which is authorised by consent, while the
other may suddenly turn an honourable fight into a foul assassination.
"The mere act of judging so bristles with difficulties, that it is
likely to lead to a conflict of opinion between even the most unbiassed
judges. Who can decide between them? The fact on which their judgment
is based is there no longer. It passed in a moment, quick as thought.
Consider the terrible position in which you are placed, in the presence
of a man lying stretched on the ground before you, cold and lifeless,
who ought to be a living man full of strength and vigour.
"And now, I appeal to all seconds. In the name of good sense, in common
fairness, could you or could you not with a clear conscience take the
heavy responsibility of such a risk?