What he said was so undutiful from a
nephew touching his uncle--particularly when that uncle is a prelate--that
I refrain from penning it.
We were joined just then by the Chevalier, and together we strolled round
to the rose-garden--now, alas! naught but black and naked bushes--and down
to the edge of the Loire, yellow and swollen by the recent rains.
"How lovely must be this place in summer," I mused, looking across the
water towards Chambord. "And, Dame," I cried, suddenly changing my
meditations, "what an ideal fencing ground is this even turf!"
"The swordsman's instinct," laughed Canaples.
And with that our talk shifted to swords, swordsmen, and sword-play, until
I suggested to Andrea that he should resume his practice, whereupon the
Chevalier offered to set a room at our disposal.
"Nay, if you will pardon me, Monsieur, 't is not a room we want," I
answered. "A room is well enough at the outset, but it is the common error
of fencing-masters to continue their tutoring on a wooden floor. It
results from this that when the neophyte handles a real sword, and defends
his life upon the turf, the ground has a new feeling; its elasticity or
even its slipperiness discomposes him, and sets him at a disadvantage.
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