Take your bumper again, and pledge me: Long live the noble art of fencing, and your series: quarte, tierce and side-thrust!" "They'll live," replied Allertssohn, "ay, they'll live.

Many hundreds of noble gentlemen use the sword in this country, and the man who sits here has taught them to wield it according to the rules.

My series has served many in duelling, and I, Andreas, their master, have made tierce follow quarte and side-thrust tierce thousands of times, but always with buttons on the foils and against padded doublets.

Outside the walls, in the battle-field, no one, often as I have pressed upon the leaders, has ever stood against me in single combat.

This Brescian sword-blade has more than once pierced a Spanish jerkin, but the art I teach, gentlemen, the art I love, to which my life has been devoted, I have never practised in earnest.