In what bucolic school of fence he had been taught was beyond imagining.

He was downright clownish.

"Short work and simple" was my judgment, while his red hair seemed a-bristle with very rage and while he pressed me like a madman.
Alas! It was his clownishness that undid me.

When I had played with him and laughed at him for a handful of seconds for the clumsy boor he was, he became so angered that he forgot the worse than little fence he knew.
With an arm-wide sweep of his rapier, as though it bore heft and a cutting edge, he whistled it through the air and rapped it down on my crown.

I was in amaze.