Victory depends on a false movement, on some error of the calculation, rapid as lightning, which must be made and followed almost instinctively.

During a period of time as short to the spectators as it seems long to the combatants, the contest lies in observation, so keen as to absorb the powers of mind and body, and yet concealed by preparatory feints whose slowness and apparent prudence seem to show that the antagonists are not intending to fight.

This moment, which is followed by a rapid and decisive struggle, is terrible to a connoisseur.

At a bad parry from Max the colonel sent the sabre spinning from his hand.
"Pick it up," he said, pausing; "I am not the man to kill a disarmed enemy." There was something atrocious in the grandeur of these words; they seemed to show such consciousness of superiority that the onlookers took them for a shrewd calculation.

In fact, when Max replaced himself in position, he had lost his coolness, and was once more confronted with his adversary's raised guard which defended the colonel's whole person while it menaced his.