ning to receive from him other pupils than mere
beginners. In fact Andre-Louis was becoming an assistant in a much
fuller sense of the word. M. des Amis, a chivalrous, open-handed fellow,
far from taking advantage of what he had guessed to be the young man's
difficulties, rewarded his zeal by increasing his wages to four louis a
month.

From the earnest and thoughtful study of the theories of others, it
followed now--as not uncommonly happens--that Andre-Louis came to develop
theories of his own. He lay one June morning on his little truckle bed
in the alcove behind the academy, considering a passage that he had read
last night in Danet on double and triple feints. It had seemed to him
when reading it that Danet had stopped short on the threshold of a great
discovery in the art of fencing. Essentially a theorist, Andre-Louis
perceived the theory suggested, which Danet himself in suggesting it
had not perceived. He lay now on his back, surveying the cracks in the
ceiling and considering this matter further with the lucidity that early
morning often brings to an acute intelligence. You are to remember that
for close upon two months now the sword had been Andre-Louis' daily
exercise and almost hourly thought. Protracted concentration upon
the subject was giving him an extraordinary penetration of vision.
Swordsmanship as he learnt and taught and saw it daily practised
consisted of a series of attacks and parries, a series of disengages
from one line into another. But always a limited series. A half-dozen
disengages on either side was, strictly speaking, usually as far as any
engagement went. Then one recommenced. But even so, these disengages
were fortuitous. What if from first to last they should be calculated?

That was part of the thought--one of the two legs on which his theory was
to stand; the other was: what would happen if one so elaborated Danet's
ideas on the triple feint as to merge them into a series of actual
calculated disengages to culminate at the fourth or fifth or even sixth
disengage? That is to say, if one were to make a series of attacks
inviting ripostes again to be countered, each of which was not intended
to go home, but simply to play the opponent's blade into a line that
must open him ultimately, and as predetermined, for an irresistible
lunge. Each counter of the opponent's would have to be preconsidered in
this widening of his guard, a widening so gradual that he should himself
be unconscious o