André-Louis had been in his time a chess-player of some force, and at chess he had excelled by virtue of his capacity for thinking ahead. That virtue applied to fencing should all but revolutionize the art. It was so applied already, of course, but only in an elementary and very limited fashion, in mere feints, single, double, or triple. But even the triple feint should be a clumsy device compared with this method upon which he theorized.
He considered further, and the conviction grew that he held the key of a discovery. He was impatient to put his theory to the test.
That morning he was given a pupil of some force, against whom usually he was hard put to it to defend himself. Coming on guard, he made up his mind to hit him on the fourth disengage, predetermining the four passes that should lead up to it. They engaged in tierce, and André-Louis led the attack by a beat and a straightening of the arm. Came the demi-contre he expected, which he promptly countered by a thrust in quinte; this being countered again, he reentered still lower, and being again correctly parried, as he had calculated, he lunged swirling his point into carte, and got home full upon his opponent’s breast. The ease of it surprised him.
They began again. This time he resolved to go in on the fifth disengage, and in on that he went with the same ease. Then, complicating the matter further, he decided to try the sixth, and worked out in his mind the combination of the five preliminary engages. Yet again he succeeded as easily as before.
The young gentleman opposed to him laughed with just a tinge of mortification in his voice.
“I am all to pieces this morning,” he said.
“You are not of your usual force,” André-Louis politely agreed. And then greatly daring, always to test that theory of his to the uttermost: “So much so,” he added, “that I could almost be sure of hitting you as and when I declare.”
The capable pupil looked at him with a half-sneer. “Ah, that, no,” said he.
“Let us try. On the fourth disengage I shall touch you. Allons! En garde!”
And as he promised, so it happened.
The young gentleman who, hitherto, had held no great opinion of André-Louis’ swordsmanship, accounting him well enough for purposes of practice when the master was otherwise engaged, opened wide his eyes. In a burst of mingled generosity and intoxication, André-Louis was almost for disclosing his method—a method which a little later was to become a commonplace of the fencing-rooms. Betimes he checked himself. To reveal his secret would be to destroy the prestige that must accrue to him from exercising it.
At noon, the academy being empty, M. des Amis called André-Louis to one of the occasional lessons which he still received. And for the first time in all his experience with André-Louis, M. des Amis received from him a full hit in the course of the first bout. He laughed, well pleased, like the generous fellow he was.
“Aha! You are improving very fast, my friend.” He still laughed, though not so well pleased, when he was hit in the second bout. After that he settled down to fight in earnest with the result that André-Louis was hit three times in succession. The speed and accuracy of the fencing-master when fully exerting himself disconcerted André-Louis’ theory, which for want of being exercised in practice still demanded too much consideration.
But that his theory was sound he accounted fully established, and with that, for the moment, he was content. It remained only to perfect by practice the application of it. To this he now devoted himself with the passionate enthusiasm of the discoverer. He confined himself to a half-dozen combinations, which he practised assiduously until each had become almost automatic. And he proved their infallibility upon the best among M. des Amis’ pupils.
Finally, a week or so after that last bout of his with des Amis, the master called him once more to practice.
Hit again in the first bout, the master set himself to exert all his skill against his assistant. But today it availed him nothing before André-Louis’ impetuous attacks.
After the third hit, M. des Amis stepped back and pulled off his mask.
“What’s this?” he asked. He was pale, and his dark brows were contracted in a frown. Not in years had he been so wounded in his self-love. “Have you been taught a secret botte?”
He had always boasted that he knew too much about the sword to believe any nonsense about secret bottes; but this performance of André-Louis’ had shaken his convictions on that score.
“No,” said André-Louis. “I have been working hard; and it happens that I fence with my brains.”
“So I perceive. Well, well, I think I have taught you enough, my friend. I have no intention of having an assistant who is superior to myself.”
“Little danger of that,” said André-Louis, smiling pleasantly. “You have been fencing hard all morning, and you are tired, whilst I, having done little, am entirely fresh. That is the only secret of my momentary success.”
His tact and the fundamental good-nature of M. des Amis prevented the matter from going farther along the road it was almost threatening to take. And thereafter, when they fenced together, André-Louis, who continued daily to perfect his theory into an almost infallible system, saw to it that M. des
