dible 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
Phitidor's or Stamina'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. I could never advance one step beyond the improvement of the
first sitting, nay, I am convinced that had I studied it a thousand ages,
I should have ended by being able to give Bagueret the rook and nothing
more.

It will be said my time was well employed, and not a little of it passed
in this occupation, nor did I quit my first essay till unable to persist
in it, for on leaving my apartment I had the appearance of a corpse, and
had I continued this course much longer I should certainly have been one.

Any one will allow that it would have been extraordinary, especially in
the ardor of youth, that such a head should suffer the body to enjoy
continued health; the alteration of mine had an effect on my temper,
moderating the ardor of my chimerical fancies, for as I grew weaker they
became more tranquil, and I even lost, in some measure, my rage for
travelling. I was not seized with heaviness, but melancholy; vapors
succeeded passions, languor became sorrow: I wept and sighed without
cause, and felt my life ebbing away before I had enjoyed it. I only
trembled to think of the situation in which I should leave my dear Madam
de Warrens; and I can truly say, that quitting her, and leaving her in
these melancholy circumstances, was my only concern. At length I fell
quite ill, and was nursed by her as never mother nursed a child. The
care she took of me was of real utility to her affairs, since it diverted
her mind from schemes, and kept projectors at a distance. How pleasing
would death have been at that time, when, if I had not tasted many of the
pleasures of life, I had felt but few of its misfortunes. My tranquil
soul would have taken her flight, without having experienced those cruel
ideas of the injustice of mankind which embitters both life and death.
I should hav