Our hero was now wavering, and the game was in my hands, he not at all sorry if I could win it. I had one final resource: a pretty little check-mate with a medical man and a certificate. The doctor, calling on our patient one day, learned from him that he was about returning home, whereupon he informed him that in the then state of his health a winter voyage across the Atlantic was not precisely beneficial, and wrote his opinion accordingly. This I took, and inclosed with other matter to his friends in New Orleans, and Morphy seeing no way out of the difficulty, ultimately surrendered, and I had the satisfaction of hearing him declare that he should pass the winter in Paris. There was only one person dissatisfied with this. Meeting Harrwitz shortly after, I informed him with a benignant smile, "You will be happy to hear that Morphy has decided to pass a few months longer here." Harrwitz replied, with a smile that was not benignant, "Then Mr. Morphy _is not a man of his word_." CHAPTER XV. MORPHY AND ANDERSSEN. The first week in December, Monsieur de Rivière received a communication from Herr Anderssen, announcing his approaching arrival in Paris. A week prior to this Morphy had been laid up in bed with a severe illness. The rigors of a first winter in northern climates had told upon him, and I feared much for the result. He was leeched, and lost a great quantity of blood--I told him three or four pints; to which he replied, "Then there's only a quart left." He was kept very low during a fortnight, and having to lift him out of bed only four days before the match with the great Prussian master, I found him too weak to stand upon his legs, although in bed he did not feel so helpless. For two months he had had an antipathy to chess, and I had experienced the greatest difficulty in inducing him to go to the Régence at all. When I would ask him at breakfast what he was going to do with himself during the day, his immediate reply would be, "I am not going to the Régence," and he declined invitations if he thought he should be obliged to play chess. When I brought him the news that Anderssen had left Breslau, Herr Mayet having written me to that effect, Morphy said to me, "I have a positive chess fever coming over me. Give me the board and pieces, and I'll show you some of Anderssen's games." And with his astounding memory, he gave me battle after battle with different adversaries, variations and all. How he dilated on a certain game between him and Dufresne, in which, though under the mate, he first of all sacrifices his Queen, and after seven or eight moves forces his opponent to resign. "There," said Morphy, "that shows the master."