[Illustration: FIG. 127.—FLAMBERGE.] [Illustration: FIG. 128.—GERMAN MAIN-GAUCHE.] [Illustration: FIG. 129.—PATERNOSTER.] There are other ways of lightening the blade besides grooving. A favourite fashion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the golden age of the Sword, was to break the continuity by open work, which allowed free play to the ornamenter’s hand. It was also supposed to render the wound more dangerous by admitting the air. As will afterwards be shown, certain Eastern and mediæval sabres were hollowed to contain sections or pennations, which sprang out in small lateral blades when a spring was touched. A German _main-gauche_ in the Musée d’Artillerie, Paris (No. J. 485), shows three blades expanding by a spring when a button is pressed in the handle, and forming a guard of great length and breadth, in which the opponent’s Sword might be caught and snapped. Another rare form was the ‘Paternoster blade,’ fitted with round depressions, which enabled the pious to count the number of his ‘vain repetitions,’ even in the dark (fig. 129). It has been shown that the material determines the obtuseness or acuteness of the angle formed by the two planes which meet at the apex to form the edge. There are many varieties of the _fil_. The edge proper =V=, formed by the angles of resistance (forty degrees) and of entrance (ninety degrees), has already been noticed. Besides this there are the chisel-edge, mostly applied to tools such as the plane; and lastly bevel-edge, or double-slope, [Symbol], which may be called the chopper-edge: the obtuser angle is used for blades intended to cut lead-bars and similar resisting substances. [Illustration: FIG. 130.—MALAY KRÍS.] [Illustration: FIG. 131.—WAVE-EDGED DAGGER.] [Illustration: FIG. 132.—SAW-TOOTH BLADE.] [Illustration: FIG. 133.—MAIN-GAUCHE.] [Heading: _OF THE EDGE._]