I did not like him, and
he plainly perceived this, for with me it is not a very difficult
discovery, nor did he spare any sort of meanness to gain my good will,
and among other things proposed teaching me to play at chess, which
game he understood something of. I made an attempt, though almost
against my inclination, and after several efforts, having learned
the moves, my progress was so rapid, that before the end of the
first sitting I gave him the rook, which in the beginning he had given
me. Nothing more was necessary; behold me fascinated with chess! I buy
a chess-board and a "Calabrois," and shutting myself up in my
chamber pass whole days and nights in studying all the varieties of
the game, being determined by playing alone, without end or
relaxation, to drive them into my head, right or wrong. After
incredible efforts, during two or three months passed in this
curious employment, I go to the coffee-house, thin, sallow, and almost
stupid; I seat myself, and again attack M. Bagueret: he beats me,
once, twice, twenty times; so many combinations were fermenting in
my head, and my imagination was so stupefied, that all appeared
confusion. I tried to exercise myself with Philidor's or Stamma's book
of instructions, but I was still equally perplexed, and, after
having exhausted myself with fatigue, was further to seek than ever,
and whether I abandoned my chess for a time, or resolved to surmount
every difficulty by unremitted practice, it was the same thing.
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