"For the present, however, I will make up what else I consider due
to you by imparting to you secrets of this noble art. Your future
depends upon how you profit by your exceptional good fortune in
receiving instruction from me."
Thereafter every morning before the opening of the academy, the
master would fence for half an hour with his new assistant. Under
this really excellent tuition Andre-Louis improved at a rate that
both astounded and flattered M. des Amis. He would have been less
flattered and more astounded had he known that at least half the
secret of Andre-Louis' amazing progress lay in the fact that he was
devouring the contents of the master's library, which was made up
of a dozen or so treatises on fencing by such great masters as La
Bessiere, Danet, and the syndic of the King's Academy, Augustin
Rousseau. To M. des Amis, whose swordsmanship was all based on
practice and not at all on theory, who was indeed no theorist or
student in any sense, that little library was merely a suitable
adjunct to a fencing-academy, a proper piece of decorative furniture.
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