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This was when Jehan Negre, the Lombard, came to Blois and played chess against all these chess-players, and won much money from my lord and his intimates; or when Baudet Harenc of Chalons made ballades before all these ballade-makers. ChampoIlion-Figeac, 381, 361, 381. Champollion-Figeac, 359,361. It will not surprise the reader to learn they were all makers of ballades and rondels.
Coffee was too dear to be a household luxury, so every day she handed him a few halfpence to have his cup, and to watch the chess-players at the Café de la Régence.
It seemed but yesterday since she had watched with amused eyes the sherbet-sellers clanking their brass saucers, the carriers streaming the water from the bulging goatskins into the earthen bottles, crying, "Allah be praised, here is coolness for thy throat for ever!" the idle singer chanting to the soft kanoon, the chess-players in the shade of a high wall, lost to the world, the dancing-girls with unveiled, shameless faces, posturing for evil eyes.
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity.
He stammered, he grew confused, he tried to excuse what we had seen, saying that this lackey played very well, and that chess-players played with everybody. M. de Chevreuse had not come to contradict him; neither had I; we turned the conversation, therefore, and left as soon as possible.
"No!" replied one of the chess-players. "Not one of us!" "Is he here?" demanded the Inspector. Then seeing that he was to be met by Oriental impassivity, he turned to the Pilmanseys. "What other rooms are there here?" he asked. "Two," answered the elder brother, pointing to the curtains at the rear of the room. "One there the other there. Behind those hangings two smaller rooms."
Voices issued from every narrow doorway, crying up the merits of Cosmoramas, views of Constantinople, marionettes, automatic chess-players, and performing dogs who would pick you out the prettiest woman in the company. The ventriloquist Fritz-James flourished here in the Cafe Borel before he went to fight and fall at Montmartre with the young lads from the Ecole polytechnique.
This great day, in which such vast interests of heart and fortune were decided, caused but one anxiety to the Master of the Hunt, namely, whether or not the stag would cross the pond and be killed on the lawn before the house; for huntsmen of his calibre are like great chess-players who can predict a checkmate under certain circumstances.
You will thereupon write a note to the Count, saying we are two gentlemen who have met on our travels, and both claiming to be skilled chess-players, and hating to part without a trial of prowess, but lacking chessmen, we take upon ourselves to ask if he may have such a thing as a set which he will allow us the use of for half a day; and so forth.
Lloyd and Phil turned over the music in the cabinet until they found a pile of duets which they both knew, and began to try them, first to the accompaniment of the piano, then the harp. Mary, sitting in the hall where she could see both the chess-players and the singers, waited in a state of bliss to be summoned to the sewing-room.
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