not see how you can do it, where the interest of another is concerned,
where you are only called in as an assistant, and the quarrel is none of
yours: he could neither be just nor courteous, at the hazard of him he
was there to serve. And he was therefore enlarged from the prisons of
Italy at the speedy and solemn request of our king. Indiscreet nation!
we are not content to make our vices and follies known to the world by
report only, but we must go into foreign countries, there to show them
what fools we are. Put three Frenchmen into the deserts of Libya, they
will not live a month together without fighting; so that you would say
this peregrination were a thing purposely designed to give foreigners the
pleasure of our tragedies, and, for the most part, to such as rejoice and
laugh at our miseries. We go into Italy to learn to fence, and exercise
the art at the expense of our lives before we have learned it; and yet,
by the rule of discipline, we should put the theory before the practice.
We discover ourselves to be but learners:

"Primitae juvenum miserae, bellique futuri
Dura rudimenta."

["Wretched the elementary trials of youth, and hard the
rudiments of approaching war."--Virgil, AEneid, xi. 156.]

I know that fencing is an art very useful to its end (in a duel betwixt
two princes, cousin-germans, in Spain, the elder, says Livy, by his skill
and dexterity in arms, easily overcoming the greater and more awkward
strength of the younger), and of which the knowledge, as I experimentally
know, has inspired some with courage above their natural measure; but
this is not properly valour, because it supports itself upon address, and
is founded upon something besides itself. The honour of combat consists
in the jealousy of courage, and not of skill; and therefore I have known