Laroche, Budzinsky, Devinck, and other leading amateurs tried their luck at pawn and move, with no better result than contending even. Others tried at pawn and two, as, for instance, Lequesne, Guibert, Lecrivain, and Delaunay. Who of my chess readers does not know this brilliant writer in the Palamède, who has kept everybody on the broad grin throughout his numerous articles? He is always full of fun and sparkling wit, and merrily did he display it with Morphy. The first time they played, Delaunay sacrificed piece after piece, in a way to terrify anybody but his young antagonist, and certainly seemed to occupy a position dangerous to Morphy's peace of mind. The latter made one of his peculiar moves, when Delaunay observed, eyeing the board with one eye, and the spectators with the other--"_Voila un coup du bon Dieu_," and then making his reply, which set our hero reflecting, he added--"_Et, en voila un du diable._" But it was all of no use, and Morphy soon turned the tables upon him. M. Delaunay styles himself "_un casse échiquier_," for he plays as though driving spike nails. At the London Divan some months since he astonished the spectators by breaking one of the pawns, when he immediately cried out--"Oh, that's nothing; I break the rooks in Paris."
Morphy was easily approached by anybody, no matter what their strength, and I doubt much whether there is any frequenter of the Régence who did not play one or more games with him. As he invariably refused to play for any stake, this pleased them the more, and set them making comparisons between him and certain others, not at all complimentary to the latter. But what pleased them most of all was the quiet unobtrusiveness of his behavior, and the courtesy with which he treated everybody. Where his skill gained one admirer, his manner made ten warm friends.
Some of my readers may complain that I am "laying it on rather thick," and ask "Why shouldn't he be quiet and unobtrusive?" I reply that I am not to be deterred from writing what I know to be the fact (having been a witness thereof for several months) by any accusation of toadyism. I write what George Walker, Saint Amant, Löwenthal, and all the chess editors Morphy has met, have written before me; and they wrote as I now write, because the circumstance is rather extraordinary. Chess players, generally, are a class vain and imperious; and young players, like the young of all classes, are apt to be carried away by success. How few eminent amateurs are there who do not give themselves certain airs when winning--aye, and losing too--lolling back in their seats, sticking their thumbs in their arm-holes, and regarding the spectators with a self-satisfied air, as much as to say--"There, my boys, what d'ye think of that?" One gentleman at the Régence had long bullied the gallery and his antagonists in this manner; no wonder, therefore, that Morphy made warm friends of those who were that man's enemies.