From The Chambers' Journal.

TRULY, Napoleon III. finds employment for his subjects in France as well as in the Crimea, thought I, when lately threading my way amongst the piles of building materials, and the wreck of dismantled houses, in search of a favorite haunt of bygone days in the fair city of Paris. My search was in vain. The Cafe de la Regence, that for more than a century had been the head-quarters of Parisian literature and chess-playing, had fallen before the modern march of improvement, and I could not discover even the spot upon which this world-renowned resort had so long stood. The Regence was established about 1718, during the regency of the Duke d'Orleans, from which circumstance it derived its name. It immediately became, and till nearly the closs of the eighteenth century continued to be, the principal rendezvous of the leading French literati of the period. The profligate Duc de Richelieu, Marshal Saxe, the two Rousseaus--Jean-Baptiste and Jean-Jacques--Voltaire, D'Alembert, Holbach, Diderot, Marmontel, Grimm, are but a few of the celebrated names that frequented its large, low-roofed, dingy, sand-bestrewn salon. Grimm tells us that a guard used to mount daily at the Regence, and there, to prvent the mob from breaking the windows, so eager were they to see Jean-Jacques Rousseau attired in his fur cap and flowing Armenian robe. Benjamin Franklin, too, when in Paris, was a constant visitor to the Regence, and there, in all probability, acquired the first idea of his entertaining Morals of Chess; for towards the end of the last century, the Regence gradually became more of a chess than a purely literary resort.

To the litteraters of the petit-maitre school succeeded the stern men of the revolution. Robespierre, who, in spite of the change of fashion, still wore hair-powder and ruffles; played chess in the Regence with the close-cropt, shabby-looking Fouche. Another player of that period was the young sous-lieutenant of artillery, who subsequently astonished the world as the Emperor Napoleon. About this time, too, arose--the Regence being their fostering alma mater--the great school of chess-players, which has made France so celebrated for the game. Legalle, Philidor, Boncoart, Deschapelles, Mouret, La Bourdonnais, St. Amant, with a host of other less renowned celebrities, bring the series down to almost the present day--all now, save St. Amant, numbered with the dead--the very hall, that has so often resounded with their victories, levelled to the ground.

As well may be supposed, the Regence, when it had a local habitation and a name, was rich in traditionary lore. The tables where Voltaire and Rousseau used to sit, were, to a late period, known by their names. I have drunk coffee at Jean-Jacques, and played chess on Voltaire. The most cherished legend, however, was that Robespierre, who was passionately fond of chess, granted the life a young royalist to a lady, the lover of the proscribed, who, dressed in male attire, came to the Regence and defeated the sanguinary dictator at his favorite game. We would gladly believe this redeeming trait in the character of one who has so much to answer for, but the story sounds too like a myth. You might mollify the heart of the most tigerly disposed of the human race with a good dinner and a bottle or two of Clos de Vougeout, but you cannot disturb the equanimity of the mildest-mannered man, or annoy his amour propre in a greater degree, than by giving him checkmate. Still, as the relator of the legend said, "let us hope it is true."

The French novelists have laid many of their scenes in the Regence, and the compilers or manufacturers of faceise have found it a fertile soil. Of the latter, there is one that even our own learned Josephus Millerius, of witty memory, would not have been sorry to record. It relates how a certain man frequented the Regence, six or seven hours daily, for more than ten years. He never spoke to any one; and when asked to play, invariably refused, but manifested great interest in the games played by others. One day, at length, a very intricate and disputed question arose between two players. The bystanders were appealed to; but the opinions on each side were equal. The taciturn man was then called in as an umpire. He hesitated, stammered, and, when pressed, acknowledged, to the extreme astonishment of all, that he nothing whatever of the game, not even the initiatory moves. "Why, then," exclaimed one, "do you waste so many precious years watching a game you can take no possible interest in?"--"I am a married man," was the quiet reply, "and I find myself more comfortable here than at home with my wife."

Deschapelles was probably the best, and certainly the most remarkable, chess-player that ever entered the salon of the Cafe de la Regence. He was naturally endowed with an exclusively peculiar talent for rapidly acquiring a complete mastership over the most intricate games of skill. At trick-track, a very difficult and complicated game, somewhat resembling backgammon, he was unrivalled. Polish draughts, a highly scientific game, little inferior to chess, he mastered in three months, beating the very best players of the day, though seven or eight years is generally considered a fair period for a person of ordinary abilities to become a second or third rate player. More extraordinary still: he always asserted that he acquired all he ever knew of chess in four days! "I learned the moves," he used to say; "played with Bernard (a celebrated player); lost the first, second, and third day, but beat him on the fourth; since which time I have neither advanced nor receded. Chess to me has been, and is, a single idea. I look neither to the right nor to the left; but I simply examine the position before me, as I would that of two hostile armies, and I do that which I think best to be done." Still more extraordinary is the manner in which this preternatural faculty was developed. In his first youth, Deschapelles was considered to be a person of rather inferior abilities. Joining, however, the army of the republic, he was one of a small body of French infantry which was charged by a brigade of Prussian cavalry; in the melee, his right hand was shorn off; a sabre-cut clove his skull, and another gashed his face diagonally from brow to chin. This was not all. The whole Prussian brigade galloped twice over his mangled body; once in the onslaught, and again in their retreat. Deschapelles was subsequently picked up, and carried off the field, his head presenting a ghastly mass of fractures. To the surprise of everybody, he ultimately recovered; and to his death, which occurred but a few years since, he ever attributed his unparalleled endowments, as regards games of skill, to the bouleversement his brain received on that awful occasion!

To be continued.

About the Author

This article is from the journal THE LIVING AGE (Second Series, Volume XII, January, February, March, 1856), which is in the public domain.

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